Wrong Road
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: The team tracks down the killer of a young seaman, but the pieces don't add up. Warning: references to disturbing themes. Story complete.
1. Chapter 1

Wrong Road

By OughtaKnowBetter

Disclaimer: the voices in my head say I own nothing but my extraordinary good looks. Who am I to argue?

Many many thanks to my betas, FraidyCat and Alice I. They pick up my mistakes before I fall over them. Any pratfalls that lurk are mine for failing to listen to their wisdom.

***

"DiNozzo! What've we got?"

"We got a dead body, boss—"

"I can see that, DiNozzo. Tell me something I don't know."

NICS team leader Jethro Gibbs strode into Warehouse 352, taking in everything from the stray dust bunnies that inundated every nook and cranny to the tall wooden crates housed there for convenience. Some of the crates looked fresh and some were covered with several months' worth of falling filth, but all showed signs of wear and tear. Most had dents in one or more sides, and others—foolishly constructed of wood—offered splinters to anyone who dared approach unawares. The crates were stacked three high, suggesting that the roof of the place, located high above the three stacks, was at least thirty feet from the tops of their heads.

DiNozzo consulted his notepad. Not that he needed to; all the pertinent information was already in his brain but it was a habit that he'd picked up from his days on the Baltimore police force, and there hadn't yet been any good reason to give it up. It gave him something to do with his hands. "Seaman Michael McDonough, assigned to port security, boss, and working the night shift last night. He never showed up for shift change this morning. His commander called his home: no answer. They thought that he'd left his post, gotten drunk, and was sleeping it off in somebody's house. That was until his body showed up an hour ago, shoved behind some of these crates." DiNozzo knocked at the nearest one, almost collecting a splinter himself.

Gibbs stared at the body. Seaman McDonough had been a tall but slender man, and Gibbs estimated that he couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old at the outside. McGee would have the personnel details for him, if and when he wanted them. Dirty blond hair that now was matted with blood; Gibbs found himself feeling sorry for the funeral home director who would be asked to put the victim into a coffin for the ceremony. It would take a lot of work to make the seaman presentable for his mother to say good-bye. Gibbs clenched his lips. This shouldn't have happened. The world had better things to offer a young man who hadn't yet had a chance to find himself.

"We know that it's murder?"

"I should say so, Jethro." Dr. 'Ducky' Mallard ambled up from around the crate. "Preliminary cause of death was blunt force trauma to the skull, impacting the occipital region and the brain stem. I'll have to get the poor fellow back to do a proper autopsy, but I suspect that death was immediate and likely occurred sometime close to midnight."

"What makes you think that it's murder, Ducky? He could have slipped and fallen."

"This." Ziva David made her entrance, holding up a long bar of thick processed wood carefully wrapped in plastic to protect any fingerprints that might be present. "I found this several meters away from the area. Someone apparently flung it there; I found no footprints nearby that would say that it had been dropped either deliberately or accidentally."

"The edge of the two by four matches the wound on Seaman McDonough's head, Jethro," Ducky informed him. "The location of the wound strongly suggests an assailant. It would be quite difficult for our seaman to strike himself on the back of the head at quite this angle, let alone with enough force to do the damage that we've found on this poor fellow." He clucked his tongue. "Let me get this young man back, so that he can go home."

"You do that, Ducky." Gibbs deliberately turned away. He couldn't help the kid, not anymore, but he could solve the mystery of who did it—and he would. "Where's McGee? I need some background—DiNozzo?"

DiNozzo was uncomfortable. "Lives at 14 Poinsetta Court, boss, off-base. Has a roommate, another seaman named John Lapini, who's expected to ship out later today on the USS Determination."

"Notify his commanding officer—"

"Yes, boss, already done. Seaman Lapini will be stopped when he tries to board."

Gibbs stared at DiNozzo. "That was fast, DiNozzo. What else have you got for me?"

DiNozzo wouldn't meet Gibbs's stare. "Seaman McDonough has been in the Navy for two years, was expecting to remain in service and make himself a career man. No steady girlfriend. Had a habit of partying every weekend he could. Well-known to friends who apparently liked him and his partying habits. No known enemies—"

"And you know all this how, DiNozzo?" Gibbs interrupted. "That's a hell of a lot of information to get in the five minutes you've been on the scene. Who'd you talk to?"

DiNozzo stared at his expensive leather shoes, wishing those shoes were somewhere else with DiNozzo along with them. "Uh, boss…?"

"Got something to share, DiNozzo?"

"Uh, boss…I knew the victim. Not well," he rushed on to say, "but I, uh, was at, uh, a party that he had last Saturday…" It wasn't only Gibbs, but Ziva fixing him with that cold eye that she did so well. Both were experts at interrogation, and DiNozzo had the most uncomfortable feeling that this was just shy of an interrogation. He found himself seized by the urge to babble uncontrollably and solved the problem by biting his lip.

"And—?" Gibbs prompted.

Silence wasn't going to be good enough. Gibbs wanted more. Gibbs always wanted more. DiNozzo cast around for something more to say. "Uh, this girl invited me. Not dating, boss, just casual, nothing serious—"

"The party, DiNozzo." His subordinate's off-duty relationships were not what Gibbs was after.

"Oh. Right. That." DiNozzo swallowed hard. "Started around nine, Saturday night. Couple of kegs, maybe about twenty people crowded into his backyard. Got a little rowdy, and the cops showed up close to midnight. I did McDonough a favor and talked the cops out of a citation with the promise to quiet things down. Some of the more noisy party-goers took their noise somewhere else. It broke up around two, although some of his closer friends were going to help him make sure that the kegs weighed as little as possible before returning them."

"Anyone acting like a jilted lover?" Ziva asked. "Any drugs?"

DiNozzo shrugged. "There could have been drugs, but whoever was passing them would have known that I was there. I didn't make any secret of it." He stared back at them. "There wasn't anyone at that party, boss, that I would think would be looking to kill McDonough. They were mostly Navy types, and a bunch of college types from the local community college; no GW University sorority sisters there."

"So who killed him, DiNozzo, if it wasn't anyone at that party?" Gibbs asked, "and why?"

DiNozzo swallowed hard. Did Gibbs really expect him to have the answer, just because he'd met the victim briefly last Saturday?

"I may have the answer, boss." McGee stepped up, holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and dragging a short and dumpy excuse for a naval officer with him. "Boss, this is Captain Black, Seaman McDonough's commander and the man in charge of this supply warehouse."

"Captain," Gibbs greeted him.

Black wasted no time. His lips were tight, and he was shaking. "The inventories aren't adding up," he told the NCIS group.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," and the little man needed to take another deep breath, "that the inventories aren't adding up!" He huffed again, as if the repetition would mean anything more than the original statement.

It didn't. Gibbs blinked.

McGee took over in a hurry. "Boss, Captain Black did a quick scan of the various bills of lading, and found a few discrepancies. I showed him how to survey his computer records, and, boss, we're finding what looks to be a systematic raiding of the warehouse over time. There wasn't much being taken each time, but we estimate that as much as three million in goods has been pilfered from Warehouse 352 over the last year."

"This is intolerable!" Captain Black declared. "Agent Gibbs, you must do something about this immediately! The nation cannot afford theft on this scale! Think of the economy! We must do our part!"

Gibbs glared at the small and dumpy officer. "I'm open to suggestions, captain."

Captain Black had one. "Investigate! Find out the answer! Quickly, Agent Gibbs!"

A blow up was imminent. Stupidity on anyone's part wouldn't help, and McGee intervened before Gibbs could become so annoyed with the captain that damage would be done. "I'll have Captain Black get me into their inventory system," he offered quickly, ignoring the fact that he'd already done just that. "I'll see if I can pinpoint where the goods were taken," he said, dragging the hapless commander of the supply warehouse away before Gibbs made it crystal clear how ridiculous the man was.

Ziva too jumped onto the bandwagon. "I will do a background check on Seaman McDonough, his financial statements and his spending habits." She backed away hurriedly.

"I've an autopsy to get to, Jethro," Ducky told him. "Mr. Palmer! Aren't you ready yet?"

"All set, Dr. Mallard."

"Good." Ducky turned to the remaining two. "I shall see you both back at NCIS headquarters. Gentlemen." Dr. Mallard wasn't wearing a hat, but DiNozzo got the impression that an invisible hat had just been doffed in leave-taking.

That left Gibbs glaring at DiNozzo. "Well, DiNozzo?"

Try as he might, DiNozzo couldn't come up with a reasonable task that would a) move them one step closer to solving the case and b) remove him from Gibbs's immediate grasp. "Uh…"

_Whack!_

"Known associates, DiNozzo," Gibbs informed him, DiNozzo's brains still rattling. "Known associates besides _you_. Figure 'em out, and question 'em. Where were they around midnight last night?" He swung around on his agent. "Where were _you_ last night, DiNozzo? Around midnight?"

"Uh, sleeping, boss."

"Got any witnesses?"

"Uh…no, boss." Unaccountably, Tony DiNozzo flushed.

Gibbs raised his eyebrows, a small smile playing over his lips. "That a first, DiNozzo?" He walked off, leaving a flabbergasted DiNozzo behind.

***

"Jethro," Ducky greeted the NCIS team leader who was walking into the autopsy room. "Welcome to my lair."

"What'cha got, Ducky?" The place always felt cold to Gibbs, and it wasn't just because the temperature was kept to a bare minimum. The corpse of Seaman McDonough was still on the table, the chest split open in the typical 'Y' incision, and an organ that looked suspiciously like a kidney sat in a small basin preparing to be examined more closely. The head looked better, Gibbs thought, with the majority of the blood washed out of the hair. At this angle, Gibbs couldn't see the wound that had done in the man.

Ducky didn't keep him waiting. He directed Gibbs to the x-ray films on the lighted viewing box. "My preliminary verdict still stands, Jethro: blunt force trauma consistent with the length of wood that Officer David found at the scene. I can place the time of death to be at midnight, give or take some forty minutes either way. Death was indeed instantaneous for this poor fellow; he would have felt nothing but the single blow. There was some blood at the scene, but not as much as one would think given the trauma. The heart ceased to beat almost immediately, thereby reducing the impetus for Seaman McDonough to bleed extensively from his wound. However, there is more…"

"Which is—?" Gibbs prompted when it became clear that the medical examiner was waiting for a straight line.

Ducky beamed. "Three things, Jethro. First: I discovered certain fibers in the wound, something that would not normally be found on the wood that is the presumptive murder weapon. I have transferred the custody of those fibers to Ms. Sciutto, where she is no doubt busily engaged in determining both the content and the origin of the content."

"And second?"

Ducky now sighed. "Our seaman was not quite as he seemed, Jethro."

"How so, Ducky?"

"I suspect our hapless seaman would have found himself in sick bay in a short time," Dr. Mallard informed the NCIS team leader.

"He was sick?"

"Quite so, Jethro. His liver was quite enlarged as well as inflamed. Our seaman was quite the alcoholic," Ducky said. "The effects would not have been obvious—as a relatively young man, McDonough would have been able to tolerate quite a bit of abuse to his body—but I suspect that he had also recently contracted an infectious hepatitis. The nodules on the liver, while not diagnostic, are certainly suggestive. I've sent off biopsy samples for a more definitive answer."

Gibbs sighed. A less than attractive picture of the seaman was emerging: a drunken sailor out for a good time meeting his end. _DiNozzo, you gotta get better friends._ "And the third thing, Ducky?"

"Mr. McDonough engaged in intercourse shortly before his demise," Dr. Mallard told him.

Apparently Seaman McDonough had a _very_ good time, just before the end. Gibbs sighed; he hated the ones with a jealous husband or boyfriend involved. They were always so…messy.

***

"Gibbs!" As always, Abby Sciutto was glad to see him, and, also as always, she had information for him.

Gibbs set the Caf-Pow, size enormous, down onto a bare patch on her work bench. "What'cha got, Abbs?"

"Who says I've got anything, Gibbs?" she smirked, snatching up the Caf-Pow for a long and loud slurp.

"Abby, you always have something for me," he told her, smiling. "Would I be here if you didn't?"

"Good point." Abby put the Caf-Pow down and turned to her machines, some of which appeared to have delivered information comprehensible only to the gods and forensics scientists. Today was not a bubbly day: the test tubes with multi-colored liquids evaporating under the onslaught of a Bunsen burner were missing. Today's work involved machines with blinking lights and print-outs. Abby pointed to one. "The fibers that were found in Seaman McDonough's wound. They're unique, Gibbs. They weren't from the murder weapon. Not wood. Not in the slightest."

"So what were they?" Gibbs asked, prodding the answer out of her.

"Cloth," Abby announced. "Actually, two types of cloth: one was a cotton-synthetic blend, and the other was…" she stopped for a moment to wave her hands in the air, "ta-da! Cashmere. Not cheap, Gibbs. Expensive. Really expensive. Like, overseas expensive. Like, still has some of the goatskin oils on it from not being washed enough before wearing."

"So our killer was wearing clothing?"

"Not gonna go that far, Gibbs," Abby admitted, "but since our victim wasn't wearing this particular type of fabric when he was found, we're left with two options. One, he was wearing the clothing and somebody took it from him after he was murdered or two, someone else wearing really expensive cashmere was around when he was murdered. Either way, we've got somebody involved who has really expensive taste in sweaters." She beamed at her success.

Gibbs too was pleased. "Good work, Abbs. Anything else?"

"Not yet, Gibbs. Give me another day, and I should be able to narrow the cashmere down to which region of India it came from."

"You do that, Abbs." Gibbs smiled as he took his leave of her. _Maybe I should have asked her to find the goat that grew the cashmere_…

***

"The records only go back two years, boss." McGee had data up on the screen for everyone to look at: bar charts and graphs and a side helping of numbers in the millions. Gibbs ignored the pretty pictures. If he couldn't understand it in a single glance, it was worthless to him. He listened to McGee's explanation instead. "It looks as though there's been a steady pilfering of small goods, nickel and dime stuff, for as long as the records tell us. But here," and McGee changed the screen to another set of graphs which meant just as much—or as little—to his viewers as the first set, "there's a sharp increase. Prior to six months ago, it was petty stuff: a crate of knives here, an M-16 there. Some of it could have been errors in the bills of lading, and the rest the usual in-house pseudo-black market stuff that supply sergeants use to get things where they really need to go instead of where the military says that they should. Antibiotics have been another hot item, but again there hasn't been more than a box or two gone missing. Petty stuff."

"And then, McGee?" Gibbs wanted the man to get to the good stuff.

McGee obeyed. "About six months ago, there was a dramatic increase in both the quantity and the quality of the items taken. Some scary stuff, too, boss: a few crates of grenades. A whole crate of ammo. Not just a box or two of antibiotics, but four large crates. On the street, those antibiotics are worth a fortune. I estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of four point seven million in goods has been taken from this warehouse in the last six months, boss."

"And no one noticed that all this theft was taking place?"

McGee shrugged. "Apparently not, boss. Captain Black was just as upset as anyone, and just as in the dark. He claims that he didn't know."

Gibbs grunted. "Run a—"

"—a background check on Captain Black. Yes, sir. On it." McGee turned back to his computer.

"What else happened around six months ago?" Gibbs wanted to know. "Ziva?"

"Seaman McDonough was clean," she announced. "He enlisted nearly two years ago, and performed well in his position although not outstandingly. He was merely adequate, and his superiors rewarded him by ignoring him as much as possible. He shares an apartment off-base with Seaman John Lapini and is known for occasional bouts of drunkenness. There are no records of any arrests for drunkenness, nor for driving under the influence; Seaman McDonough has been discrete. He has several not so close friends who also enjoy inebriation, and occasionally dates a Ms. Jennifer Rose, a waitress at a local strip club. Yes, Tony?"

"Nothing," DiNozzo hastily muttered. "You got anything else, Officer David?"

"I do," she informed them. "I investigated McDonough's financial status. Gibbs, if McDonough was stealing things, then he hid the results extraordinarily well. He had an overdrawn checking account, and no savings. He did not live well, no high end items of any sort."

"Broken down furniture," DiNozzo murmured, clearly remembering the party last Saturday night.

Ziva spared him a glance. "Quite so, Tony. What little money he has, he appears to spend on beer."

Gibbs turned to the third member of his team. "DiNozzo? You got anything?"

"Yes, boss, I do." DiNozzo threw up a picture of a twenty-something woman onto the screen. "Jennifer Rose, McDonough's on-again, off-again girlfriend. She says that she's currently off-again, and that was before I told her that McDonough was permanently off-again. Getting vibes about her, boss. She was at McDonough's place Saturday night, hanging all over him. Didn't seem like ' off-again' to me."

"Fine. She's yours, DiNozzo. Bring her in for questioning." Gibbs looked around, made another decision. "Ziva, go pick up the roommate, what's his name? Capellini?"

"Lapini," Ziva corrected.

"Right. Lapini. Whatever. Go get him, see what he knows. McGee?"

"Yes, boss?"

"Keep at the warehouse end of things. See if you can track where any of the pilfered goods have gone. That's your end." Gibbs glanced up at the staircase that led to the inner sanctum of NCIS. "I'll be making a phone call."


	2. Glory Road

Tony DiNozzo stared in at the woman sitting in Interrogation Room One, knowing that she couldn't see him through the one way glass. His notes said that she was twenty-three, but she looked closer to thirty and beyond. Lines dragged at her face, and tears had put long streaks of black mascara down her cheeks. DiNozzo wanted to cut her some slack because of the death of a friend, but the brown roots showing from beneath brassy red hair said that she'd been neglecting herself for far longer than the two hours that she'd known that McDonough was dead. On the other hand, she had a lot of curves in the right places. Those curves were in evidence as she sat at the bare table, twisting a gold ring around her finger. Despite what she said, Jennifer Rose was not just a 'waitress'. She worked in a strip joint, and her stage name was 'Rose of Glory'.

Next door, in Interrogation Room Two, Ziva had put the roommate, John Lapini. Him, DiNozzo could see as shocked and distraught. Where McDonough had been tall and thin, Lapini was short and squat. In civvies, which DiNozzo remembered from Saturday night's party, Lapini looked positively dumpy. _Clothes do make the man_, he decided grimly. Lapini looked a lot better in fatigues; the love handles could pretend to be muscle. DiNozzo could barely tell that the guy's hair was light brown, it was cut so short. His duffle was dumped to one side of the chair; Ziva had pulled him aside just as he was about to board his ship for a six-month tour. With luck and innocence, the Navy could fly Lapini out to join his mates in a day or two, when the team had cleared him. Until then, Lapini could sit where he was.

Ziva interrupted Tony's thoughts. "Which one first?"

"Huh?"

"Which one first?" she repeated. "Which suspect shall we talk to first?"

As if it made a difference. "Ladies first," he finally said.

Ziva waited impatiently. "Well?" she finally said.

"You do it," DiNozzo tried to say.

"No, Tony." Ziva was definite. "You have an acquaintanceship with them. You question them; I will observe for slices in their shielding."

That pulled DiNozzo back to himself. "Cracks in their armor, Officer David."

"Whatever. Go inside, Agent DiNozzo." She folded her arms.

No getting out of this one. DiNozzo reluctantly dragged himself into Interrogation Room One.

Jennifer's face lit up when she saw him. "Tony? This is where you work?"

"Yeah." She'd looked a lot better at the party, DiNozzo decided. Make-up hid a lot of the lines, and the dim light helped. He found it hard to believe the documents that swore up and down that she was only twenty-three.

Jennifer wasn't cowed. "NCIS? What does that stand for? Are you really a cop?"

"Naval Criminal Investigation Service, which means that yes, I really am a cop. A cop for the Naval Services." It was an explanation that he'd had to give all too often. He tried for stern. "And I don't give out parking tickets, Jennifer."

She took the lead in the questions. "Am I in trouble? What happened to Mike? The other woman with the long black hair, spoke with some sort of accent, the one who picked me up and brought me here; she said that Mike was murdered. Is that right, Tony?"

Had he really talked to her that much Saturday night, that she could address him so familiarly? Tony couldn't remember, only that he'd talked to a lot of people for a long time and drunk a lot of beer. His date had wandered off. Come to think of it, his date hadn't returned his phone call. Uh-oh. One more problem that would have to wait.

"You're not in trouble," DiNozzo told her. "We just need some information."

"You got it," Jennifer said immediately. "What do you want to know?"

DiNozzo consulted his blank note pad. "How long did you know McDonough?"

Jennifer considered. "About a year, maybe a bit more. We dated a couple of times. He caught my act, bought me a few drinks; that sort of thing. Nothing serious; neither one of us was ready to settle down."

"Did he have any enemies?"

Jennifer snorted. "Get real! Nobody, but nobody, was ever intimidated by Mike, and that included the bums that he ran out of the warehouse at the base. They used to hope that he'd pull a night shift, so that they could have some place warm and dry to spend the night, then leave in the morning before the next shift came on. You met him, Tony. You know what he was like."

DiNozzo ignored her comment, pursuing the interrogation. "Easy-going kind of guy?"

"You met him," Jennifer repeated. "Not a care in the world. His unit wasn't scheduled to go overseas for months, and he had a cushy military job with lots of bennies like health care. He was planning on sticking it out for twenty years, then sitting on his ass collecting a government pension and holding a fishing pole."

DiNozzo recalled what Ducky had said about McDonough's liver and his long term prospects. Clearly this chick didn't know about that and, DiNozzo reflected, McDonough may not have, either. "Did he say anything about the bums he kicked out in the morning?"

Jennifer shrugged. "Not to me. He'd been doing mostly day shift work that week. When he worked nights, he had a bunch more come around begging."

"Any names?"

"Sure, but nothing that would help."

"Try me." Dryly.

Jennifer obliged. "Let's see. There was Boondoggie, and L.C., and the Colonel—Mike said the guy claimed to be a colonel in the French army somewhere, maybe the Foreign Legion or something—and then there was Hash, and… Am I going too fast for you?"

DiNozzo stopped writing. "How did these guys get close to a Navy warehouse? How'd they get through the fence around the post?"

Jennifer shrugged. "Ask them. It's not as though there was a lot of expensive stuff floating through there."

_Little did she know_.

Jennifer didn't hear DiNozzo's thoughts. "Hell, Mike even took me there one night." She winked at DiNozzo. "For a quickie."

DiNozzo kept the table between them. "Where were you last night?"

"I wondered when you'd get around to that," Jennifer said. "I was at work. 'Did anyone see me?'" she asked, taking the next line and then immediately answering herself. "Yes, Agent Tony DiNozzo, only about fifty people, all of whom were guys. No, I take that back; there were a couple of other dancers there as well. I left around three, after my last number."

"Went straight home?"

"Not too many places open at that time of night, Tony, and I can get all the drinks I want at work."

"Right." DiNozzo glanced at the mirrored glass, wondering what Ziva thought, wondering if there was anything else he should be asking. This chick seemed innocent. That was what his gut was telling him. "You can go," he told her, "but stick around town, in case we have more questions."

"Cool," she said. "This is the most exciting thing that's happened to me since high school."

Some people really needed to live. DiNozzo let her go, waiting for Ziva to come in.

"What about the ring?" were the first words out of Ziva's mouth.

"What ring?"

"On her finger," Ziva said with annoyance. "Did you not see it, Tony? A ruby the size of a melon."

"Oh, that." DiNozzo dismissed it. "Probably fake."

"The term is 'costume jewelry,' Tony. And how do you know that it's fake?"

"Because she doesn't have enough money for the real thing," DiNozzo explained impatiently.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Can we get to Lapini now?" DiNozzo turned on her. "Your turn, Ziva. Make him spill his guts."

"Easy as cake."

Ziva sauntered into Interrogation Room Two. Moments later she sauntered back out, leaving a naval Seaman in tears, completely wrung out. "He's clean," she reported.

DiNozzo gaped. "How did you get him to break so fast? You didn't touch him."

"Of course, DiNozzo. You Americans forbid any form of physical coercion. It took me longer than usual," she conceded, "but he was innocent of any wrong-doing in the murder of his roommate. I had to be certain of that." She walked away, then turned around. "You might want to remind him that he's free to go, Tony. I don't think he believed me."

***

"Boss, we got a problem."

"What is it, McGee?"

McGee did something esoteric to his keyboard, coercing a picture of a map to appear onto the screen overhead. Gibbs stared at it, wondering at what he and the rest of the team was supposed to be gawking. He settled into his desk chair, radiating impatience.

McGee didn't leave them in suspense. "Boss, I've narrowed down the pilfered items from the warehouse that have been stolen over the last six months. Leaving out the small pen and pencil type items, the nickel and dime stuff—"

"Get to the point, McGee."

"Yes, boss. Boss, more than two million in small arms such as M-16s and sniper rifles have been diverted over the last six months. I got a hit on a couple of the serial numbers; they're showing up in the hands of Taliban fighters along the Afghan-Pakistani border. I'm still working on the other two million dollars' worth of weaponry, to find out where it went."

"Well, hurry it up, McGee." Gibbs did not like hearing this news. It suggested that whatever Seaman McDonough had been mixed up in had been bigger than anyone wanted it to be. It suggested that this might not be a simple yet messy case of a cuckolded husband/lover for the unknown woman with whom McDonough had shared his last hours. He stared at the map that McGee had left on screen, wishing that the various electrons would magically produce more intelligence that would solve the problem on this end of the world. Figure out who was behind it and how they were getting the weaponry from a locked and guarded warehouse, Gibbs realized, and solving the problem of how a bunch of M-16s ended up in terrorist hands would no longer be an issue. Those M-16s would resume going to the soldiers for whom they were intended instead of their opposite numbers. "Does anyone want to give me an answer as to how the weapons are leaving the warehouse under our very noses?"

McGee wasn't finished. "I have part of the answer, boss," he offered. "All of the crates are bar-coded, and the information on the barcode is what tells the transport people what ship or plane to load the crates onto. I've done a random scan of the barcodes, and they seem to be in order. The crates are leaving the warehouse in proper fashion. It's only after they've been at sea or in the air and transferred to another means of transportation that we lose track of them."

"So it's not a problem at the warehouse." Gibbs didn't believe that. He had a dead body telling him otherwise.

McGee agreed with him. "No, boss. I think it _is_ at the warehouse. I think it's something to do with the barcodes."

"You just said that there's nothing wrong with the barcodes, Probie," DiNozzo put in.

"Right, Tony. The barcodes in the computer are fine. But something is telling people to transfer the crates when they shouldn't, and that something can only be on the barcode. Boss, I need to go back to the warehouse and see what I can find." McGee looked up expectantly.

He got what he asked for. "Do it, McGee. Let me know what you find."

Ziva too had a request. "Gibbs, I'd like to explore Ms. Jennifer Rose a bit more. I am not satisfied with the information we uncovered during her interrogation."

"Oh?"

"Yes." Ziva shot an annoyed look at DiNozzo. "She had in her possession a ring with a large stone which appeared to be a ruby. She may have assets recently acquired."

"The night club dancer, right? Take DiNozzo with you."

"Uh, boss…?"

"You got a problem with that, DiNozzo?" Tony DiNozzo, asking _not_ to go to a strip club? This Gibbs had to hear for himself.

Unaccountably, DiNozzo flushed. "No, boss." He turned to Ziva. "Let's go. _I'm_ driving."

"You perhaps think that my driving skills are inferior to yours, Tony?"

"I _know_ they are, Ziva." DiNozzo hoisted his pack over his shoulder. "Let's go."

***

"Thanks, Tony. You are an angel." Abby gave the NCIS agent an enormous hug. "I have been waiting for this mechanic to finish working on my car for like three days, and this is like the only chance I have to pick up my car before he closes in the afternoon. You are my savior!" she finished, adding yet another hug.

"Abby, really, it's not that big a deal," DiNozzo protested. "Just don't tell Gibbs. Ziva and I should already be at the night club by now."

Ziva peered out from the passenger side of the car. "I should think that you would do your own work on your car, Abby."

"Are you kidding? This guy is an artist with a wrench! Besides, Gibbs keeps me so busy that I never have time for stuff like that, and somebody told me that it was good for the economy if I paid somebody to do that so that the money would keep flowing from one person to the next, and you know I always want the economy to do well—"

"Right," DiNozzo interrupted, detaching the lab rat's arms from around his neck. "Listen, you go in and repossess your car, and Ziva and I will head over to the night club to do work. Okay?"

"Okay." Yet one more all-encompassing hug, and Abby was off, pig-tails flying.

DiNozzo got back into the car. He caught sight of Ziva staring at him. "What?"

"It's getting late," she complained. "You could have asked McGee to take Abby to her mechanic."

Yeah, he could have. But that would have meant getting to the night club faster, and DiNozzo was not looking forward to the event. "It was in the opposite direction for him," he improvised.

"Not exactly. It was out of our way as well," she pointed out.

"Are you saying that we shouldn't have helped Abby out?"

"I am not saying that at all, Tony, and you know it. Drive, or we will be later than ever."

"What, you have plans for tonight?" he gibed.

"As a matter of fact, I do," she told him.

"Really? What?"

"None of your business, DiNozzo."

"Partners gotta look out for each other, Ziva."

"Exactly. Just as they do when offering to run errands without checking that they have the _time_ to run those errands for Abby."

DiNozzo gave up. This was not going to be his day. There were times when it was simply best to get through the day as quickly as possible and then go home and hide under the covers.

***

"Gunny, those M-16s are only the tip of the iceberg." The face on the MTac screen was craggy. Gibbs could count every pore with the face coming across the thousands of miles to be plastered six feet high on the screen. "Those Taliban fighters have M-16s, pineapples, bazookas—you name it, they've got it. There was a sharp upswing in their artillery some four or five months ago."

"That ties it into our timeline, Commander." Gibbs was grim. "You got anything I can use?"

"I wish I did, Gunny. I wish I did." The gusty sigh came right through the screen. "You stop it on your end, and you'll have a bunch of grateful Marines and their mothers. There are too many of us getting killed with our own weapons. It needs to stop, Gunny."

Gibbs tightened his lips. "No hint of who's involved? Not even a rumor?"

The commander thought. "There was one mention of a gun-runner named Konietska, but the claim couldn't be substantiated. Ever hear of him?"

"Nope. What do you have on him?"

"That's just it: nothing. He's a ghost, assuming that he really does exist. Like I said, Gunny: nothing you can use."

"We'll see, commander. We'll see. I'll keep you posted."

***

McGee, being McGee, made a beeline for the computers at the warehouse. Captain Black accompanied him, but sidekicks were not what McGee was after.

"It's not our problem at this warehouse," Black insisted, hovering over McGee's shoulder. "The crates are being diverted after they leave. That's where you should be searching, Agent McGee."

"Not practical, captain." McGee's attention was on the computer screen in front of him.

"Hey! You're not supposed to be able to get in there!"

"I'm NCIS," McGee reminded him. "My access codes can get me into a bunch of places."

"You're hacking!"

"No, sir." McGee's mouth was moving, but his attention was on the information flowing in front of his eyes. "Hacking involves the illegal use of techniques to bypass security protocols. I have a legitimate access code which allows me to view most of the military data banks, including this one. Ah, there it is."

"That's my warehouse!" the captain screeched. "That's my inventory!"

"Yes, sir, it is," McGee confirmed. "I need a short list of the barcodes for the crates that you are currently storing. Then we're going to confirm that what the computer says is…got it." McGee hit print, taking up the pages that the printer spit forth. He turned to the captain, careful not to stand up and loom over the excitable little officer. This man had seen combat? McGee found it hard to believe, even though that was what the man's jacket said. Maybe he had been in charge of supplying the field kitchens, McGee decided. He put on a welcoming smile. "Care to join me, captain?"


	3. End of the Road

The night club looked tacky and worn by day. The sign had a bit too much dirt on it, and the stools that bellied up to the bar were shiny from too many heavy backsides using them over and over. The omnipresent odor of smoke refused to go away, even mid-afternoon when the place boasted all of two bored customers.

"This is it?" The tone of Ziva's voice said that she really despised the thought of entering this establishment.

"That's what the sign says," DiNozzo replied.

"You've been here before?"

"Bite your tongue," he snapped back. "I'll have you know that I have much better taste."

Ziva looked around and shuddered. "Normally, I would disagree with you, Tony. In this case, I'll believe you."

"Thanks," he told her sarcastically, holding open the door for her to precede him.

The bartender looked up from where he was stacking glasses that looked marginally clean in the dim light. His eyes lighted on Ziva, and an avaricious light stirred in his piggy eyes. "She dance?"

"You can't afford her," DiNozzo slipped in, before Ziva could do something that would ensure that the employment offer would be withdrawn. He flipped out his badge. "We're here on business."

The bartender jerked his thumb at the certificates on the wall, the papers covered over by soot-stained plastic. "We're up to date, mister. You've got no call to be closing me down."

"We're not here to close you down." _Although we'd like to_, rang out into the silence. "We're looking for Jennifer Rose."

"Who?"

"One of your waitresses," DiNozzo told him. "Don't try to tell me that she doesn't work here. I've met her."

The bartender closed his mouth, swallowing the lie that had started to emerge. Instead, he sullenly turned to the back and yelled, "Jenny! It's the cops! They want you!"

DiNozzo cringed.

It didn't matter. Jennifer Rose emerged from the doorway, a tray of dirty dishware in her hands. She brightened when she saw who the 'cops' were. "Tony," she greeted him with a big smile, completely ignoring Officer David. "What brings you down here?"

"Official business." How formal should he be? DiNozzo split the difference by not using either her name or her title. He glanced around. "Is there some place that we can talk?"

Jennifer gestured to a booth in the corner of the dingy club. "How about over there? It's not as though there's a bunch of people to listen in."

"That will do fine," Ziva cut in, taking over. She wasted no time once they were seated. "Ms. Rose, you stated that you saw Seaman McDonough socially and have remained friendly with him."

"That's right," Jennifer said cautiously. "Tony, what's this about?"

"I am asking the questions," Ziva told her. "Tell me about Seaman McDonough's other friends. What about his roommate, Seaman Lapini?"

"Who, Johnny?" Jennifer thought. "Didn't you just talk to him this afternoon, like me? He's okay, I guess. Gay, but you already knew that, right?"

"Right," DiNozzo lied.

Ziva wouldn't let DiNozzo interfere. "Was there any bad blood between them? Anything that might lead Lapini to want to harm McDonough?"

"Nope. Not a thing," Jennifer chirped. "They were great roommates. They had it worked out so that they could use the house in privacy whenever they needed to. There was never any competition for girlfriends, if you know what I mean." She winked at Tony. "Little competition over use of the bedroom every now and again. Bet'cha know what that means, too."

They did. "Aside from yourself, Ms. Rose, with whom did Seaman McDonough spend his leisure time?" Ziva wanted to know.

"Oh, lots of people," Jennifer said cheerfully. "You met a lot of 'em, Tony, Saturday night. Mike never got _real_ friendly with many people, just liked being around a lot of people and having a good time. He always figured that he could build up a life later on, when he was ready to settle down."

Ziva switched tactics. "I noticed your ring earlier today. How long have you had it?"

Jennifer beamed. She glanced down at her bare finger. "A couple of weeks. This guy gave it to me as a tip." She giggled. "I guess he liked the way I danced."

From the way she said it, DiNozzo wouldn't have wanted to swear in court that the 'Rose of Glory' meant dancing on stage. 'Dancing on his lap' would probably have been more accurate.

"I think it went with the costume that I had just taken off." Jennifer leaned over to treat DiNozzo to a display of her charms, her blouse hanging open. "It's just costume jewelry, but I kind of like it. Why? Is it stolen?"

"Not that we are aware of," Ziva told her, re-directing the attention back to the conversation. "Are you certain that it's costume jewelry?"

"Honey, around here, _everything_ is fake except my boobs. Why would a guy give me an expensive ring? Especially a guy that I'd never met before that night? And what does this have to do with Mike's death?"

"May I see it?" Ziva held out her hand.

Jennifer blinked. "It's not here."

"Where is it?"

"I think I left it at home."

"But you said it went with your costume."

Jennifer looked annoyed. "I'm not wearing that costume tonight. Look, come back tomorrow, and I'll be sure to bring it in, okay? What's the big deal?" She leaned over once more, letting her blouse gape open yet again. "Look, you were asking about Mike's friends, right? There one of 'em, right over there. Hey, Teddy!" she called to one of the patrons sitting at the bar, nursing something amber. "Come over here."

The man that Jennifer pointed out wasted no time in hustling over to join them, even before Ziva could object that she hadn't finished speaking to the 'Rose of Glory'. Jennifer introduced them. "This is Teddy Cray," she said, "Johnny's main squeeze. Teddy, this is—"

"I know." Teddy slid into the booth, snuggling up to DiNozzo. "Tony and I met a couple nights ago. It's _so_ nice to see you again, Tony." His hand moved toward DiNozzo's. Tall and thin, with long arms that were hard to avoid, Teddy didn't look as though he belonged in a strip club. A gay bar would have been more fitting for the man. DiNozzo wouldn't swear that the long and dark eyelashes on the man weren't fake, and it looked as though a hefty chunk of a hefty salary went toward outfitting the man in high-end designer duds.

"Uh, yeah." DiNozzo pulled his hand back, trying for _out of reach_. Fat chance, with those long arms. Were those muscles in that skinny forearm? Damn right; this was a guy with a lot of leisure time to put into weight-lifting and keeping in shape. Skinny shape, but it was his and he made the best possible use of it. DiNozzo wished that the booth were larger, so that he could scoot his ass away from this character's. "Mr. Cray, this is official business."

"Of course." Teddy tried to gaze into DiNozzo's eyes.

DiNozzo hurriedly looked away. _How the hell do you interrogate a guy without looking at him?_ For DiNozzo most assuredly did not want to peer into Teddy Cray's brooding browns.

Fortunately, Ziva launched the attack. "Mr. Cray, how long have you known Seaman McDonough?"

"Mike?" Teddy allowed his attention to wander away from DiNozzo. "A good year, maybe more. He introduced me to Seaman Lapini."

There was something off, and Ziva pounced. "For someone described as your 'main squeeze', you don't sound especially pleased to discuss Seaman Lapini."

"I'm not." Teddy went for miffed. He looked dramatically away, then 'forced' himself to return to Ziva with a lingering and smitten look toward DiNozzo in between. "We are no longer a couple. I don't love him any longer."

"Oh, Teddy!" Jennifer was sympathetic. "When did this happen?"

"Saturday," Teddy sniffed. "He started paying attention to that horrible corpsman."

"Who, Bart? Teddy, Bart's not interested in Johnny."

"Oh, really?"

Ziva was not interested in the love triangles unless they involved Seaman McDonough. She went for the standard lines. "Did Seaman McDonough have any enemies?"

"Of course not. He always had keg parties. Everyone liked him."

"Not everyone," DiNozzo observed dryly. "Somebody killed him."

"I know." Teddy's hand inched closer to DiNozzo's; DiNozzo inched away. Teddy batted his eyelashes. "Who did it?"

Ziva went for the throat. "Did you?"

Teddy's eyes flew open, fluttering long artificial lashes. "Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Where were you last night?"

"Here. I was alone," he added pointedly, "_without_ Johnny."

The whole scene was wasted on the NCIS agents, DiNozzo decided. He really didn't care that little Teddy had broken up with Johnny, and was sobbing his heart out into the watered-down night club booze. Ziva and he were here to investigate the murder of one Seaman Michael McDonough, and questioning his friends didn't seem to be getting them anywhere.

For once, Ziva agreed with him. "We will contact you if we need further information," she informed the pair of them. "Do not leave the area without notifying us."

The 'Rose of Glory' rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't dream of it," she said, with a smirk toward the 'stage'. "I do two shows a night and I get twice the tips when they're twice as drunk."

***

"Hey, Abbs."

"McGee!" Abby rolled her stool closer to the cell phone speaker so that she could hear the agent in the field better. "What'cha got?"

"Abby, I need your help. I'm in the navy warehouse, the one where we found the dead seaman."

"Right. What do you want me to do?"

"Open your email, Abby. I sent you a partial list of the barcodes on the crates that are currently in the warehouse." Pause. "You can also tell Captain Black, standing beside me, that this information is secure, that it's not going anywhere besides NCIS headquarters."

"The information is secure, it is not going anywhere besides NCIS headquarters," Abby dutifully repeated. "Like it ever does?" She tapped the screen to her computer, opening the indicated email. "Why are you sending me love letters, McGee? You know my heart belongs to Gibbs."

"Think of this as the NCIS equivalent of a dozen roses," McGee said. "I'm going to send you pictures of the actual barcodes on the crates. I need you to see if they match. Okay, I'm going to sign off now, so that I can take and send those pictures."

"Call you back in a few, McGee."

***

"McGee!"

"Hey, Abbs. You got those barcodes I sent you?"

"Yup. Not all of 'em match, McGee."

"They don't? Abby, that's great! I mean, that's not so good for the Navy, but it's great for us—"

"McGee, I've got two words for you: Gibbs said, 'good work'."

"Gibbs?"

"Right. Him. The big guy. The one who always seems to know when something really really good pops up. He was here. In my lab. You know, when I was—"

"He came in while you were comparing the barcodes?"

"Yup," Abby confirmed. "He was here, with a fresh Caf-Pow. And he said, 'good work'. Since he didn't say, 'good work, Abbs', I'm assuming that he was including you in that 'good work' comment. Of course, I could be wrong, but—"

"Abby, did he say anything else?"

"Did I not just say: two words?"

"You did, but—"

"That's all he said, McGee."

"Did he say that I should come back in?"

"Nope."

"No instructions at all?"

"Nope."

"What does he want me to do?"

Sigh. "I could be wrong, but…" Abby let her voice trail off, accompanied by a loud slurp on her Caf-Pow."

"But, what?"

"I really think that he wants you to finish your investigation, McGee."

Dead silence.

Then: "Thanks, Abby. I'll remember you said that."

"Any time, McGee."

***

Two barcodes flashed up onto the screen in the center of the NCIS bullpen, separated by a line down the center of the screen. There was a series of numbers underneath each barcode, and the numbers were identical. The barcodes, similarly, appeared to be the same.

"The barcode on the left is the code that was entered into the warehouse inventory computer lists," McGee lectured. "Whenever a shipment is received by the warehouse, it receives a barcode and that barcode is entered into the computer. This is an almost completely automated system. There's a handheld device that automatically scans the barcode and sends it to the computer. Fool proof."

"Obviously not," Ziva observed, watching the display from behind her desk, "or you would not be making an issue of telling us this." She leaned back in her chair, ignoring stacks of manila file folders piling up on her desk and DiNozzo trying to figure out how to add his own files to her stack to finish for him. Gibbs simply stared at the screen with the barcodes.

"Right." McGee gave her the point. "These barcodes are what the navy, and just about everyone else in the civilized world, uses to simplify the process of directing where each crate should go. All of the information is entered into the barcode."

"Get to it, McGee," Gibbs pushed.

"Right, boss. The barcode on the right is a snapshot I took of one of the crates in the naval warehouse where Seaman McDonough was found. At first glance, they look identical."

"McGee…"

"Hurrying, boss. The numbers below are identical, but when we shift the two pictures to super-impose over one another…" McGee did something with his keyboard, causing the two barcodes to align. "We can see that the last lines are different."

"That's not something you can pick up with the naked eye." DiNozzo honed in on the main concept immediately.

"Right. Boss, this is how the goods are being stolen. They're being diverted through the barcodes, ending up somewhere that they shouldn't. The numbers below the barcodes are correct, and that's the only thing that people check as they walk through the warehouse. Once the crates leave the warehouse, however…"

"The barcode directs the crate to somewhere else, where it can be picked up for diversion to someone else." Gibbs finished the statement, tightening his lips. "How does the barcode become different, McGee? I thought you said the crates get scanned into the warehouse upon arrival."

"They do." McGee swung around to face the rest of the team. "While I was waiting for Abby to get back to me, I checked out some of the crates. Boss, someone is changing the barcode from the original old one. The numbers stay the same, but the barcode is changed at some point in the warehouse, before it gets shipped out."

"Any evidence on who is putting on the new barcodes? How they're getting changed?"

McGee shook his head. "Could be anybody, boss."

"Not anybody, McGee. McDonough is dead. Whoever is receiving the stolen goods sure isn't about to kill off his inside man." Gibbs stared off into space, thinking. "Does Captain Black know about this?"

"Yes, boss. He was with me."

Gibbs nodded, accepting the information. "Is he going to share?"

"I instructed him not to."

"Good." Gibbs turned to DiNozzo. "Check him out. Clear him. I want to make certain that our Captain Black doesn't have any signs of illegal income."

"On it." DiNozzo turned to his computer.

"McGee."

"Yes, boss?"

"Can you rig up some sort of camera system, so that we can monitor the warehouse? I want to see if we can catch the bastard in the act, rigging those barcodes."

"Nothing simpler, boss."

"Good. Ziva, help him out. Give him a second pair of hands."

"Certainly." Ziva rose. "What do you want me to get, McGee?"

McGee grinned, and dry-washed his hands. "Let's stop by Tech and see what toys we can get. This is gonna be fun."

***

Gibbs caught up with his forensics scientist on her way out through the front door of the NCIS headquarters. "Heading home, Abby?"

"Yup," she told him.

"Got plans?"

"_Oh_, yeah." Abby grinned at him. "Tonight's bowling."

"Bowling? I didn't know that you bowled, Abby."

"I don't. But Horace, the guy who lives in the apartment two floors down, has invented this screwy bowling ball that he swears will hit a strike every time. This I gotta see." Abby warned to her subject. "He says that he hollowed out the inside, filled it with liquid mercury, and that gives it the power of three bowling balls and makes it jiggle from side to side, so that it knocks off more pins."

"Right." It didn't make sense, but it didn't need to make sense. It intrigued Abby, and that was enough.

Something else wasn't making sense, and Gibbs frowned. "Isn't your car in the parking garage?"

"Nope." Abby grimaced. "I got it back from my mechanic, but when I tried to park here at NCIS, the garage was filled. I parked across the street." She glanced upward at the darkening blue sky signalling the finish of the day. "Glad it's not raining. That would be a bummer." She frowned, thinking. "You going home? On time, I mean?"

"For now." At her raised eyebrows, he added, "I'll be back around midnight. I've got McGee setting up cameras at the warehouse."

"Ah." That was an explanation that Abby could understand because in her world, Gibbs never went home. He would take an occasional break to work on his boat, but home for Gibbs, according to Abby, was NCIS. "You want me to stay? Or maybe come back? I could help McGee—"

"Got it covered, Abby."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure, Abby. Go home. Come back tomorrow."

"Right, Gibbs." Abby heaved a sigh, clearly hoping that her boss would change his mind and tell her that he needed her.

He did—but he needed her with a clear mind. All the caffeine-laced Caf-Pows wouldn't help his favorite lab rat to function if she didn't get a few hours off now and again. If playing with bowling balls injected with liquid mercury did the trick, then Gibbs was all for it. He headed for the NCIS garage, watching Abby from the corner of his eye as she waited impatiently at the corner to cross the street to the public lot where her car waited.

It would be one more nightmare to add to his collection. The details would be etched into his memory forever, that much he knew.

Abby stepped off the curb after doing a routine check for oncoming traffic. There had been none, and she was half-way across the road when it happened.

A dark sedan—black, Gibbs would tell them, not blue—roared around the corner. It aimed straight for Abby. It didn't make any effort to avoid her.

Gibbs didn't think that there had been any screams, either from Abby or any of the other bystanders, but that part of him wasn't paying attention. Blood roared in his ears, blocking out any other sound, as he dashed toward the impending disaster.

He watched it happen in slow motion: the car reached the forensics scientist. Abby stuck out her arms, as if that would ward off the oncoming car. It didn't; she went flying into the air. Later estimates would show that her flight lasted fourteen feet and four seconds without benefit of wings. Abby crumpled to the ground.

The car streaked away.

***

Her eyes sought his. "Gibbs."

"Don't try to talk, Abby."

She obeyed that order about as well as any other. "What happened, Gibbs?"

Gibbs bit his lip. "You got hit by a car, Abby."

"Oh. That explains why it hurts so much." It also explained the expression of pain on her face.

Gibbs tossed a glare at the ambulance paramedic. "Can't this thing go any faster?"

"Not without rolling the truck." The paramedic was sympathetic. "We'll be there in two minutes."

Which was two minutes too long, in Gibbs's opinion. He squeezed Abby's hand. "Help is on the way. Hang in there, Abby."

She squeezed his hand back, a pallid imitation of her usual ebullience. "Don't let go, Gibbs."


	4. Sharp Left Turn

The first words out of Gibbs's mouth were, "she's in surgery."

No greetings, no hopeful comments, just a bald statement of fact as his team came barreling through the waiting room door to D.C. General. At this time of night there were several others in the surgical waiting room, and Gibbs had commandeered a room off to the side.

The place was drowning in disinfectant, the odor covering up the smell of other, less pleasant scents. The walls were a utilitarian yellow, and someone had rather desperately scrawled the words 'I can't breath' on the third cinder block up. None of the NCIS team could figure out whether the last word was an honest spelling error or if the writer had been carted away before he or she could finish writing.

"How bad is it?" DiNozzo spoke for all of them.

Gibbs couldn't meet any eyes. "They said it was a miracle that she wasn't killed on the street." _I let go of her hand…_ He sought out his friend, the man he thought might be able to make a difference. "Ducky…"

"I'll find out what I can, Jethro, but I doubt there will be any news, even for me." Dr. Mallard disappeared into the inner sanctum of the hospital to pump his sources.

If they couldn't do anything here, his team was spoiling to do something; _anything_. "License plate?" Ziva asked.

Gibbs glared. "Blacked out."

"Which means that this was deliberate." DiNozzo, like the rest, was in angry investigative mode. "Current case?"

"Not likely," was McGee's contribution. "There hasn't been enough forensic evidence for Abby to sift through."

"Unless there's something that we haven't found yet."

"Which means that we should go over the crime scene again."

"Unless it has something to do with a case where Abby's due to testify."

"There's the Reuters case."

"That wimp? He wouldn't—"

"It would be just the passive-aggressive sort of thing that he might try—"

"Get on it," Gibbs ordered. "Ziva, McGee: finish setting up the surveillance equipment at the navy warehouse. Don't let that go," he told them with a glare. "We all want the bastard that ran Abby down, but we also have a job to do. Work the crime scene again when you're through, because there's always the possibility that this current case is why someone is after her. DiNozzo, run through Abby's cases. See which ones have the possibility of being involved. Ducky!" he exclaimed, the medical examiner returning far more quickly than he'd expected. "Is she…?"

"Doing better than could be hoped for, Jethro." Ducky held up his hands to calm the people around him. "The surgeon, Dr. Stern, is quite pleased. There were internal injuries that will take a bit of time to heal, but nothing more than that, aside from a few bumps and bruises. Abby is quite a fortunate young woman."

Yeah. Fortunate. Fortunate to be lying in a hospital bed, juiced to the eyeballs with narcotics to keep from screaming with the pain of it all. Gibbs wanted to scream himself. "Can we see her?"

Ducky shook his head. "She's not awake yet." Good thing, in Gibbs's opinion. Ducky continued, "I'll keep track of the situation. I've made the staff aware that we'll need a statement from Abby as soon as she is coherent. It will be at least an hour or more, Jethro."

That was that. Nothing to do but sit and think, then think some more. Others might call it brooding and, if Gibbs was being honest with himself, he would as well. "Go," he ordered his team and, when they looked ready to mutiny, added, "this was no accident. Find the bastard responsible."

***

It was not what Anthony DiNozzo wanted to be doing. He wanted to be out, pounding the pavement, questioning suspects to figure out who deserved a long stay in Leavenworth after a short session with a bunch of clenched fists.

Instead, he was at NCIS headquarters, seated in front of his computer, doing work that he had given up when Gibbs had taken on the probie. McGee was much better at tracking criminals through cyberspace, but McGeek was currently involved in using his much vaunted MIT degree in setting up surveillance cameras at the naval warehouse. Not a waste of time, but DiNozzo could think of better ways to use McGee: _you find 'em, McGeezer, and I'll pound 'em. We'll leave the leftovers for our favorite Mossad assassin_.

Step one: see if there were any traffic cameras trained on the intersection. Response to step one: no. No cameras, no pictures, nothing to lead him anywhere toward the identity of the driver. DiNozzo ground his teeth. _You'd think they'd have the sense to put up a camera outside of NCIS headquarters…_

Wishing didn't make it happen. There were cameras outside of NCIS headquarters, but they were trained on the entrance and the lobby of the building itself. None were pointed toward the street outside, not even accidentally. DiNozzo moved on to the next task: identifying Abby's other cases. He electronically leafed through her files, discarding this one and that. The Abner Jones murder case washed out; the perpetrator had already been convicted and was just waiting for the judge to get around to sentencing him. The Wallace case was likewise doubtful. Abby would be testifying on the forensic evidence on that one, but the damning part of the case would be coming from Gibbs himself. It was hard to argue with a video-taped interrogation of a confession. If Wallace was looking for a get out of jail free card, he'd be coming after Gibbs and not Abby.

Damn. There were four cases of Abby's that were still open, and not one of them looked promising. DiNozzo moved on.

Time to look at the nasties recently released from a well-deserved vacation behind bars…

***

They worked in angry silence, with only McGee's terse instructions to Ziva as to where to position the surveillance cameras punctuating the air. There was no witty banter, no complaining that one or the other had the more onerous job. They were here because Gibbs had made it a direct order: set up the surveillance cams, inside and out. Chances of the scene being involved in Abby's hit and run were running between slim and none, but they had a job to do. They were professionals, and they would get the job done before indulging their real feelings.

"Any more?" Ziva climbed down from the stepladder that she'd dredged up from somewhere.

McGee surveyed the warehouse with an expert's eye. "That should cover it for the outside of the warehouse. We can see almost all of it with the cameras. Let's head inside and set up the next set, so that we'll be able to identify anyone who tries to alter the barcodes with picture good enough to take to the trial." He looked back at his fellow NCIS agent as he opened the door to the warehouse interior. "Shall we look at the crime scene again while we're in there?"

"Wait." Ziva held up her hand, cocking her head. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"Sh." Ziva listened. "Gone."

"What's—"

Ziva dropped her voice to a whisper. "Go to the crime scene. Make noise. Draw attention away from me." Her hand automatically slipped to her waist, checking the availability of her Beretta, and she ghosted away into the dimness of the night-lighted warehouse.

McGee's face hardened. He lost sight of her within seconds, but that didn't matter. The Mossad agent was out there, hunting. He got to be the stalking goat.

He would play the part. McGee strode to the corner of the warehouse where the Seaman's body had been found, making sure that his shoes cracked loudly against the concrete floor. "Good," he told the empty air, just loud enough to barely be heard, making it sound as though he was talking to his partner, "the blood stain is still here. They haven't cleaned it up yet."

He felt a small itch in the center of his back, as if someone were taking aim at him. He longed to take out his own gun, have it ready in his hand, and restrained himself. That would look suspicious and alert whoever was out there that they were on to him.

Didn't help the itch. McGee strained to hear anything in the air, something that belonged to Abby's attacker rather than Ziva slinking around the perimeter of Warehouse 352. He forced himself to concentrate on the crime scene, scanning the target area in a systematic grid pattern, cataloguing the items that he found. There was the cigarette butt, labeled number six with a bright yellow plastic place-holder, that had already been removed—he thought that Tony had actually bagged and tagged the thing—and was waiting in the Forensics Lab for Abby to dust it for prints and see if she could pull off any DNA for a better match. _Like that's gonna happen any time soon_. There was the dented corner of the crate, still boasting a smear of blood, that DiNozzo had originally thought the victim had fallen against. DiNozzo had been correct, but a fall hadn't been the cause of death. The murder weapon had been a two by four, already removed from the scene and now represented by its own plastic yellow place-holder labeled 'two'. Pictures had been taken from every angle, and everything had been observed from several different perspectives. There wasn't any further information to be gleaned from the site, not unless Ziva was able to drag in the perpetrator of the sounds that she'd heard. If someone was out there, she'd find him—or her.

_Scritch, scritch_. McGee heard it. He heard something clearly. "Ziva?" The itch at the center of the bull's eye on his jacket got a little stronger. "Ziva, is that you?"

No answer.

McGee forced himself to remain calm. It was only his imagination. Ziva had his back. She wouldn't let anything happen to him. She was out there, listening, hunting the perpetrator of the sounds that she had heard. It could even be a mangy alley cat, hunting for a scrap to eat in lieu of a tasty mouse. Ziva would ghost back into his field of vision, annoyed that she hadn't found the murderer and Abby's attacker—_assuming that they were one and the same. Big assumption, McGee, and not at all warranted by the evidence_—and they would complete the re-working of the crime scene so that they could return to what they really wanted to be doing—hey!

What was that shadow? McGee had been over this crime scene with a fine tooth comb, and he didn't remember a large and dark shadow in that corner where the lights did a less than adequate job of illumination. The feeling of being watched heightened.

The hell with this. McGee pulled out his handgun, feeling better having it in his hand instead of in his holster. Senses alert, he advanced, using the nearest crate as inadequate shielding. "Ziva?"

Still no answer. A foot came into view, something with a two inch stiletto heel, slightly askew from the ankle and almost falling off. The foot was attached to a leg encased in dark pantyhose.

Crap, it was a body! Was it Ziva? Had whoever was out there taken down the Israeli agent? No; couldn't be. Not with those stiletto heels.

"Ziva!" he hissed, trying to listen to the cold air, searching for hints that the perpetrator was still out there.

"What?"

The voice materialized two inches from his ear. McGee couldn't help it; he jumped, nearly crashing into the nearby crate. "Ziva!"

"What?" She sounded annoyed. "I heard a cat; it scampered off through a broken window. But, McGee, I found traces of two sets of footprints, a woman wearing heels and those of a man, and now they're gone. The tracks are old, so I believe that we are too late to find them."

"No, they're not." McGee pointed. "Not all of them. Some of them are right there."

Ziva tightened her lips. The stiletto heels were obvious, unmoving in the dust. "Damn."

***

Hated it. Hated hospitals with a passion, not that he would ever show it. Been here too many times himself and worse, been here too many times with the people in his life. DiNozzo, almost dead from plague. Kate, dead from an assassin's bullet. There had been that time with Jenny, before she became Director of NCIS, when he hadn't been able to protect her. There was a wife, now cold in her grave. A daughter who would never go to her senior prom.

Now Abby. Dammit, Abby was a forensic lab rat, not supposed to get involved in something like this! Field agents got shot at and run over, not forensics scientists. That was why they didn't put lab rats through intensive physical training, didn't teach them how to protect themselves in the field. _Gibbs_ was supposed to do the protecting.

And he'd failed. Again. The evidence was lying in the bed next to him, wired for sound, little green blips jumping up and down in a monotonous rhythm on a monitor. Being part of so many machines must be making his favorite lab rat feel at home. If she could, Gibbs was certain that Abby would be talking to them. Maybe she was, in her own way. Monotonous rhythms were good, Ducky once told him. Regularity was good. Irregularity was bad. Dysrhythmias, was Ducky's term for them.

Two black eyes, and that was the least of the injuries. Ducky had catalogued them, had a learned discussion with the surgeon, and Gibbs had tuned them out. _Would she live?_ was what he wanted to know.

_Yes, she would_, was Ducky's answer, going on to comment on health and youth and other meaningless remarks about the will to live.

_He'd better be right_. Gibbs sat there, not quite sure of what to do and knowing that he couldn't be anywhere else. He couldn't afford to lose another part of his soul, the part that was lying on the hospital bed next to where he sat with little green blips adding to the general noise level.

"Gibbs?"

"Abby?" Gibbs sat up in a hurry. "Abby, it's okay. You're safe now."

She stared at him through two swollen and bloodshot eyes. The small line of sutures across her forehead looked like the Bride of Frankenstein costume she'd donned in years past—and it hadn't been Halloween. Those eyes looked at him accusingly, and with more than a little fear. "Gibbs, you let go."

Gibbs winced. "I'm sorry, Abby," he told her, engulfing her smaller fingers in his larger grasp. "I won't do it again."

***

Ziva sucked in her breath.

"You know her?"

Ziva did. "That, Agent McGee, was Jennifer Rose, AKA the 'Rose of Glory.'"

That caught McGee's attention. "McDonough's girlfriend? The woman you and Tony interviewed?"

"The one and same. We interviewed her twice. I had intended to question her a third time, McGee. I was not satisfied with the information that I obtained from her."

"What's she doing here?"

"I don't know, McGee. Why don't you ask her?" Ziva suggested sarcastically. "Oh, I forgot. You can't. She's dead." She surveyed the scene. "Call Gibbs, McGee, and then call Ducky; perhaps they are together at the hospital with Abby. I'll start processing the scene. How convenient that we already have pictures of most of it. We can do a before and after comparison."

"Hey, how come I have to call Gibbs?" McGee complained. "You know he's going to be pissed."

"That's why you have to call him, McGee." Ziva escaped before McGee could come up with a reason to switch tasks.

The corpse was chilled; Ziva risked a small poke at the corpse, and found the flesh to be cold, suggesting that death had occurred several hours previously. Ziva looked at the girl, feeling sorry for her. To be so young, and killed when she still had all of her life before her. It wasn't fair, but then again, life never promised to be fair. It wasn't much of a life by Ziva's standards, but it had been Jennifer's and taking it away before the kid had had a chance to experience it was just _wrong_.

Jennifer Rose looked worse in death than she ever had in life. Her bleached blonde hair was matted with blood; whoever had killed McDonough had found a technique that he liked: bash the victim over the head with a two by four, then toss the chunk of wood away. If this one was like the other, the two by four would have been wiped clean of fingerprints. Abby had discovered that much before someone tried to kill her. Ziva determinedly steered her thoughts away from the forensics specialist. Brooding over Abby's injuries would accomplish nothing, and Ziva wanted to get through this task so that she could concentrate on finding Abby's attacker.

Ziva grabbed up her pack, pulling the camera out and began snapping more shots. Ducky would be on his way, and would pronounce the corpse and remove it so that she and McGee could finish processing the murder scene. The young woman wasn't part of the armed forces, but her death was on naval property and it was involved with the death of Seaman McDonough. Thinking that it had nothing to do with McDonough would be foolish.

The corpse had flopped onto the cold concrete and gone nowhere. Jennifer Rose had dressed in a seductive manner, and Ziva wondered if the girl had expected to go to her job at the strip club after meeting whoever it was that she had come to meet. It seemed like a reasonable possibility. The clothing had not been disturbed, leading Ziva to decide that the girl had not been raped. Ducky would confirm that during his autopsy. Right now, the girl's death was a great big question mark.

"What a waste." McGee stepped up beside her, his ears flaming.

"It was," Ziva agreed. "Gibbs?"

The ears went slightly more pink. "Not happy," McGee acknowledged. "Ducky was with the boss. Ducky'll be out here as soon as he gets hold of Jimmy." He glanced up at the ceiling. "I wish we could have gotten the cameras up before this happened. We would have gotten it all on tape."

Ziva agreed. "Tony and I spoke to this woman just this afternoon. She gave no indication that she was involved, although I had a suspicion. What do you call it? A hunch?"

"She wouldn't have admitted to anything," McGee sighed. "Maybe I should go back to headquarters to see what I can dig up on her. Financial background, bank accounts, that sort of thing."

"Maybe you should stay here until Ducky arrives," Ziva tossed back at him.

"Really? What do you expect to be doing, Officer David?"

Ziva settled for the expression that said _do not ask the question if you do not want to hear the answer_. "Tapping a few of my sources, Agent McGee." _This was serious_. "I have another…hunch."

***

There was no one to impress. No one was around for the practice of sophomoric jokes. Punching out the computer screen with his fist wasn't likely to get him anything more than bloody knuckles and a reprimand from Gibbs for wasting the taxpayers' money on a replacement screen which would come out of his own paycheck anyway.

With no one to impress, DiNozzo was all business. It hadn't been a 'motor vehicle accident'. It was no 'accident'. It had been a deliberate case of attempted murder, and there was nothing that DiNozzo could do for Abby besides pray that it would stay in the category of 'attempted'.

An outsider looking in might assume, with all the jokes that Anthony DiNozzo played on Ziva and McGee, that DiNozzo couldn't be trusted to carry a case through to completion.

Nothing was further from the truth. DiNozzo had already ruled out all of Abby's open cases and was two-thirds through any potential ex-jailbird out for revenge when Gibbs's call had come through.

"DiNozzo. You got anything?"

"Not yet, boss."

Heavy and long-suffering sigh. "Then get your ass over to the crime scene."

"Boss?"

"There's been another murder. This one under our noses, DiNozzo."

DiNozzo sucked in his breath. He didn't want to get pulled away from searching for Abby's attacker. "Who?"

"The girlfriend. Get out there, DiNozzo." There was a helpless anger in Gibbs' voice, one that said there was too much to do and too few people to do it. It was a tone that said Gibbs couldn't leave Abby's side, and wanted to be in two or maybe three places at once.

DiNozzo shoved down his own frustration. "On it, boss."

***

"I will be able to ascertain the approximate time of death, Agent DiNozzo, when I complete the autopsy." Dr. Mallard withdrew the long thermometer that he had just used, sliding it into its container for future decontamination. "At the moment, the best that I can offer is that this poor young woman met her demise somewhere between the hours of four and eight this evening."

"Shortly after we talked to her." DiNozzo looked away, wishing that the answer would miraculously appear in the rafters of the navy warehouse. "Ziva and I can close the gap, Ducky. We spoke to her at about four this afternoon. She was alive when we left at four-thirty." He ran the figures in his head. "I'll get Ziva to confirm, but these were not the clothes that she was wearing when we spoke to her this afternoon, which means that she stopped somewhere, probably home, to change, then came over here. That doesn't leave time for her to swing by NCIS headquarters; we can rule her out as Abby's hit and run." _Another task I'd like to get back to_, hung unsaid in the cool night air inside the cavernous warehouse. "That means that we still don't have a link between this case and hers. That would be too easy. How is she?" he asked the doctor, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Still coming out of anesthesia," Ducky told him. "She's quite a lucky young woman, Anthony."

"Right. Nearly killed, and we can't find the reason why," DiNozzo grumbled. "And to top it off, we're stuck trying to solve this case when we should be investigating hers. Real lucky."

"The answer will arrive soon enough, Mr. DiNozzo," Ducky reproved him. "Jethro is with her at the moment; I defy any ill-wisher to get to her through him."

"Yeah." Ducky was right, DiNozzo reflected. Trying to go through Gibbs would be like trying to batter down a brick wall reinforced by ten feet of concrete armed only with a toothpick. It wasn't going to happen.

The team still needed their leader, and to get their leader back they needed to nail the bastard who had tried to run down their pet lab rat. Rock and a hard place; they needed Gibbs to be in two places at once.

Couldn't be helped. "Where's McGee?" he asked, looking around, spotting the cyber-geek approaching. "You all done here, McGeek?"

"Just about finished, bos—" McGee checked himself. "Just about finished, Tony. There's nothing obvious about the crime scene; I bagged and tagged everything new and sent them up for the forensics people to look at." His face darkened; that was Abby's territory. Substitutes weren't going to cut it.

"Good. Where's Ziva?"

McGee's face was carefully blank. "Didn't she check in with you?"

"I wouldn't be asking if she did, Probie."

"I'm right here, Tony." The smaller woman strode up to the trio, not an ounce of apology in her at leaving the crime scene in McGee's capable hands.

DiNozzo was not in a forgiving mood. "Where have you been, David?"

"Gathering information." Ziva remained calm.

"And I suppose you got something?"

"Yes, Tony, I did." Enough chatter. Everyone, including Ducky, came in close. Ziva eyed them all. "Gibbs spoke to a contact in Afghanistan, who told him that the stolen weaponry from this warehouse has been passing through a gun-runner by the name of Konietska."

"I remember," DiNozzo said evenly. "I also remember the reports that this guy didn't even exist."

"I have access to my own sources of information." Ziva was unimpressed. "Konietska does exist, although no one admits to ever seeing him or doing business with him. Yet the weapons continue to flow, not just from this warehouse," and she waved at the building around them, "but from several different sites around the world. Most industrial nations suspect that Konietska has stolen from them; even the Chinese, although they refuse to disclose such to the intelligence community."

"So this guy Konietska is involved." DiNozzo was willing to take that information on good faith. "Where does he fit in? He receives the goods; why would he murder McDonough and his girl? Are you trying to tell us that he's in this country, under our noses?"

"I suspect that we will have answers, Mr. DiNozzo," Ducky said, "when we determine why he tried to kill Abigail." He doffed a nonexistent hat. "If you will excuse me, lady and gentlemen, I have an autopsy to conduct."

***

Ducky seated himself on the chair next to Ziva's desk. "Get Agent Gibbs on the phone," he ordered, unusually curt for this early in the morning. His hands were still reddened, the soap irritating the skin from frequent hand-washing.

"Ducky?" Ziva looked up, as did DiNozzo and McGee.

"Gibbs," Ducky insisted. "He needs to hear this."

"Right." It only took a moment, and Ziva put the call on speaker. "Gibbs? How is Abby?"

"Doing better," came the welcome reply. "She woke up a couple of times during the night. Her docs are pleased."

"Good to hear." They all relaxed at that statement. Ducky swung into his news. "Jethro, I have just completed the autopsy on Miss Jennifer Rose."

"And?"

"Jethro, do you remember that my report on Seaman McDonough indicated that the fellow had thoroughly enjoyed himself shortly before his demise?"

"Get to the point, Ducky."

"Jethro, DNA typing suggests that Miss Rose is the woman with whom Seaman McDonough thoroughly enjoyed himself on the night in question."


	5. Blind Alley

There were six of them, all seamen assigned to guard duty at the navy warehouse. At nine in the morning all but two were yawning. Tongues hung out, begging for caffeine.

Aside from caffeine withdrawal, they looked nothing alike. Some were short, some medium in height, and one looked as though he'd given up a promising career in basketball to enlist. None had facial hair, but DiNozzo suspected the influence of the military rather than any real tonsorial leanings. More had brown eyes than blue, although one looked as though purple was the best way to describe the color. They were all in reasonable shape, however DiNozzo could see that these were not the cream of the Navy crop. There was a reason that they had been assigned to what ought to have been a low skill, low risk task.

It didn't matter. For DiNozzo, they were all blending into one. He picked one at random. "You. What's your name?"

"Seaman Forrest, sir."

"Into the Interrogation Room," DiNozzo ordered. "The rest of you, no talking. No comparing notes. McGee, keep an eye on 'em."

"Sure thing." The 'boss' didn't come out this time, DiNozzo noted. McGee was more interested in the data popping up on his computer screen, eager to get to the information before Gibbs returned from his place at Abby's side. Ziva was already in the observer position outside Interrogation Room One, ready for DiNozzo to begin.

DiNozzo didn't waste any time. With six to get through, there would already be enough time wasted. He conducted Seaman Forrest into Interrogation One and consulted his notes, hoping to see a sweat break out on the seaman's forehead.

He was immediately rewarded by the very beads of sweat that he wanted. The kid looked as guilty as sin and twice as unhappy. This was going to be a piece of cake, he decided. What information was DiNozzo going to pry out?

"Seaman Andre Forrest," he drawled.

"Sir!"

DiNozzo had a feeling that the name, rank, and serial number weren't far behind. "I understand that you are assigned to guard Warehouse Number 352."

"Sir, yes, sir! Day shift, sir!"

DiNozzo hadn't heard so many 'sirs' since he'd investigated a murder at an officer training school, and maybe not even then. He pretended to browse through the manila file in his hands. "It says here that last week you did a few evening shifts."

"Sir, yes, sir." Forrest's ears flamed red. Considering that the man's skin tone was dark, DiNozzo decided to call that significant.

"See anything unusual, seaman?"

"Sir, no, sir!"

"Nothing?" DiNozzo could smell a lie at thirty paces. This kid stank.

"Sir, no, sir!" The sweat beads grew to small lakes.

"No one came in, looking at barcodes?"

"No, sir."

Okay, that was different. What DiNozzo had said hadn't fazed the seaman at all. In fact, Forrest seemed almost relieved, as though he'd expected DiNozzo to be asking about something else entirely. DiNozzo's curiosity was piqued. He tossed a glance at the one-way mirrored window, knowing without seeing her that Ziva was picking up on the same thing.

Hunting season was open. DiNozzo moved in. "Tell me about the warehouse, seaman."

"Sir?"

"Crates come, crates go." DiNozzo waved his arm around to illustrate. "You involved in that?"

"Yes, sir."

Still not hitting the nerve. Forrest stayed cool as the proverbial cucumber on this topic. DiNozzo went for generalities, hoping to hit something by blind chance. "Tell me about it."

"Nothing to tell, sir. Crates come, crates go." Forrest repeated DiNozzo's line from ten seconds previous.

"Who brings them in?"

"Depends, sir."

"Depends on what?"

Forrest shrugged. "Who's bringing them. Outside contractors, they send trucks. I help the drivers offload the crates. We got a lift; most of the crates are too big to manhandle."

That corresponded with reality. The crates that DiNozzo had seen at Warehouse 352 were big enough to hold a small party with a keg. "How about when the crates leave?"

Another shrug. "Pretty much the same way. We use the lift to take the crates down to the dock. The ships, they got a crane to lift the crates on deck."

"Who does the work?"

"Whoever the dock commander sends," Forrest supplied. It was clear there was nothing about the process that worried him. The sweat had left; he looked about ready to swing his feet up onto the table and relax. "Different guys, all the time. Seamen, for the most part. The non-coms, they got better things to do."

"Nobody looks at the barcodes?"

"Sure, we do," Forrest responded. "That's part of the job. We got this hand scanner that records the barcode as it leaves the warehouse. Makes our job a hell of lot easier. Good gig," he told DiNozzo. "Not overseas; get to go home and watch the tube, party on weekends. Girls speak English around here, don't live in tents and try to slip a knife into your ribs."

"Right," DiNozzo said dryly. "Just like Seaman McDonough and Jennifer Rose."

Seaman Forrest paled. "Uh, yeah. Yes. Sir," he tacked on lamely.

Bingo! There was guilt there. The sweat was back, and it had to do with either McDonough or Rose or both. "How well did you know Seaman McDonough, Forrest?" DiNozzo asked, keeping it casual.

Gulp. "Uh, not too well, sir."

"Well enough to go to some of his parties?"

"Uh, maybe, sir."

"Maybe like last Saturday, seaman?" DiNozzo moved in for the kill.

Mumble.

"What was that, seaman?"

"Uh, not sure, sir."

"Make a guess," DiNozzo pushed. "Would it help your memory to know that _I_ was at McDonough's place last Saturday, seaman?"

Forrest searched DiNozzo's face. Recognition flashed. He gulped. "I—I guess I was, sir."

"Yeah, I thought I recognized you." DiNozzo let the statement hang in the air, enjoying the fear in the suspect's face. "Let's try this again, Forrest. How well did you know Seaman McDonough?"

"Uh…" Forrest looked around, hoping for a black hole to suddenly appear that he could dive into and escape.

"Seaman?"

"Sir, I…" Forrest came to the conclusion that the black hole would not, in fact, come to his rescue. He swallowed hard. "Sir, Ms. Rose and I…"

"Yes, seaman?"

"Ms. Rose wasn't seeing McDonough any more. She was seeing me!" Eyes rolling back in his head, almost out of his mind with fear; this was the truth, bald and stark and out in the open. It put a new spin on things.

"You were dating Jennifer Rose, Forrest? The dead girl?"

"Yes, sir." Forrest stared down at the floor. "Not steady, but enough. She'd come to the warehouse before or after her gig at the club. We'd do it there."

"In the warehouse?" DiNozzo had higher standards for where he'd seduce a lady. "Wasn't it cold in there?" _And dusty. Let's not forget dusty. Sneezing in the middle would add something indescribable to the experience._

"There were some packing blankets in the back room," Forrest confessed, letting everything out. It was a relief for him to come clean, of that DiNozzo was certain. "Sometimes, when I pulled evenings or nights, she come and we'd do it. I wasn't hurting anyone," he babbled, talking faster and faster. "Nobody got into the warehouse. Nothing went missing. We were just having some fun. It wasn't anything serious, sir!"

Which explained why Seaman Forrest didn't seem particularly broken up that the girl he'd been screwing had just been murdered. He was much more interested in pulling his own hide out of the proverbial fire.

"You're not gonna tell Captain Black about this, are you?" Forrest asked nervously. "I mean, he could make a big stink over this…"

"We'll see." DiNozzo chose to let the seaman stew. "You're dismissed, seaman, but I don't want you to go anywhere for the next couple of days. Don't talk to any of the others outside. Dismissed, seaman," he prodded.

DiNozzo waited for the seaman to leave the interrogation area before speaking to Ziva. "Love triangle," he diagnosed. "Forrest and McDonough fight, Forrest bops McDonough over the head and kills him."

Ziva snorted. "Tony, that is wrong on so many levels that it isn't funny."

"Really? What's wrong with it, Ms. I-can't-get-a-date?"

Ziva glared at her partner. "Why would he kill Jennifer Rose? The competition has been removed; Seaman Forrest could continue to see her whenever he wished. And I can too get a date whenever I want, Tony. Just because I don't go boasting about every man I date doesn't mean that I don't have plenty of male companionship."

DiNozzo thought fast. "Forrest killed her because she knew that he killed McDonough. She threatened to go to the cops and expose him."

"Tony, _we_ talked to her just yesterday, shortly before she was killed. And your theory does nothing to explain who was diverting the crates of weapons, nor who attempted to kill Abby."

"Details, details," DiNozzo grumbled. "I suppose _you_ have a better idea?"

"As a matter of fact, I do, Tony."

"Yeah? What?"

"I wish to interrogate the rest of the seamen," Ziva informed him archly, "so that I can obtain more information., after which I shall indeed determine if my idea has merit."

***

"Gibbs?"

"Abby." Gibbs was carefully holding her hand this time, not letting go. Finding a spot to hold wasn't the easiest thing, not with IVs stuck into undeserving flesh and bandages wrapping around other appendages. "Welcome back."

"Yeah." Abby would have blinked, had her eyes not still been swollen shut. "What happened, Gibbs?"

"You were in a car accident, Abby—"

"Now I remember!" The indignation shone through. "It was no accident, Gibbs! That guy…"

"I know, Abbs." Gibbs squeezed her hand gently. "We're looking for him."

She coughed, wincing in pain. "Remind…me…not to do…that again," she whispered. "Did you get him?"

Gibbs also winced. "Still looking, Abbs."

If she'd had the energy, Abby would have glowered. "How hard is it to find a tall, skinny guy with dark hair wearing a pink shirt and black tie?" she asked.

Gibbs went on point. "You _saw_ him, Abby?"

"Well, _yeah_. He was kinda' hard to miss, driving right at me, Gibbs." Abby giggled, and it sounded entirely _wrong_, even for his off-beat lab rat.

Narcotics. Wonderful things, in certain circumstances. Gibbs wished hard that this didn't have to be one of them. "Anything else, Abby?"

"There was a B and a D on the plates, Gibbs. Virginia plates. They were blacked out, but I could…see…the outline…"

Suddenly, Gibbs could barely hear her. "Abby?" He leaned over.

"So…cold…Gibbs."

The blips stopped being regular.

"Abby?" Gibbs clutched at her hand. "Abby, don't do this."

He lost hold of her hand when the crowd of doctors and nurses barreled into the room, bringing resuscitation equipment with them.

***

A tall and thin young man, dark hair carefully coiffed and clothes neatly pressed, entered the bull pen where McGee sat working at his computer. The man carried a single rose. He looked around, clearly not finding what he was looking for. The man coughed, hoping that McGee would deign to notice him.

Kindred spirit. McGee had had plenty of similar situations, walking into a room full of jocks who thought that the best use of a computer geek was to strip him of his homework and then do something involving underwear. McGee took pity on the man. "Can I help you?" He noted the rose held in the man's hand. "Are you looking for someone? Officer David, perhaps?"

"Uh, no." The man continued to look around, not seeing who he wanted. "Uh, can you tell me where Agent DiNozzo sits?"

_Oh, this is going to be good!_ McGee mentally dry-washed his hands in anticipation. "Right there. Can I tell him that you're here?"

"Uh, no." The man carefully set the rose onto DiNozzo's desk, putting it on top of a pile of papers that DiNozzo hadn't gotten around to filing in the circular file.

"Any name?" McGee was going to milk this for all it was worth, in payback for all the times that Tony DiNozzo had razzed the uber-geek.

The tall skinny man shook his head. "He'll know," he said, adding, "we're good friends. _Good_ friends."

DiNozzo? _Good_ friends? With a rose? McGee doubted that DiNozzo knew how 'good' a friend this guy thought he was. This joke would last for the next year, at least. "Are you sure you won't leave your name?"

"He'll know." The man shook his head, retreating toward the exit. "He'll know."

Oh, _yeah!_

***

"Seaman Roy." Ziva had the same manila folder in her hands that DiNozzo had had with Seaman Forrest, a fact of which Seaman Roy was blissfully unaware. DiNozzo was outside in the observer chamber this time. Ziva flashed DiNozzo a look through the one way glass; _wait and see how an expert performs an interrogation._

This was one of the short ones, the one with the almost purple eyes and a deep, intense—and unalleviated—need for caffeine.

"Seaman Roy." Ziva leaned forward, radiating an air of interest—and menace. The man didn't know where to look, knew that looking at her chest would get him into trouble and unable to look anywhere else. Ziva took advantage of his distress. "You are assigned to guard Naval Warehouse 352."

"That's…that's right, ma'am." Already stuttering.

"The night shift."

"Yes. Yes, ma'am." He gulped.

More beads of sweat, DiNozzo noted sourly. Not fair. Ziva was using unfair tactics to rattle the guy.

"Do you always work the night shift, guarding the warehouse?" Ziva kept her voice soft, and enticing.

"Uh, yes, ma'am. Mostly. Couple evenings. Mostly nights." Sweating profusely at this point.

"Does everything stay quiet, Seaman Roy?"

"Uh, yes, ma'am."

"No one comes in? No homeless men, looking for shelter?"

"Uh, I turn 'em away, ma'am."

"No one else?"

"Uh, no, ma'am." Seaman Roy's teeth were chattering at this point.

"I think you're lying to me, Seaman Roy," Ziva cooed. "I think someone has come to the warehouse in the middle of the night."

"Uh, no, ma'am!"

Lies. All lies. The lowliest rookie could tell that. Question was: what was the lie covering up?

"Who came to see you, seaman?"

"Uh, no one, ma'am!"

The exclamation points were getting bigger and bigger. The fear was leaping off Seaman Roy and jumping through the one way mirrored glass at DiNozzo. Roy's eyes were all but rolling back in his head.

Ziva abruptly changed tactics. "Who was it, seaman?" she rapped out curtly. "Who came to see you and changed those barcodes?"

"Barcodes, ma'am?" The fear instantly disappeared, to be replaced by bewilderment. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He didn't. No matter how Ziva pushed and prodded, Seaman Roy had nothing to give on the subject of barcodes, and as soon his fear of discovery vanished, so did the lever that Ziva had over his head.

Ziva wasn't finished. There was dirt there, and Ziva would uncover it. She retreated to the point where she had lost her suspect. "But someone did come to Warehouse 352, and on a regular basis, did they not, Seaman Roy?"

"Uh, no, ma'am."

Yup. Fear coming back. Ziva was like a little terrier, worrying at the rat hole. DiNozzo was able to appreciate her technique. Fat chance that he'd ever tell her that to her face.

"Who was it, seaman?" The question stung.

"No one, ma—"

"Do not lie to me!" she interrupted curtly. "Who was it? Man or woman?"

"Uh, ma'am, they'll reprimand me—"

"I will arrest you for _murder_, seaman!"

"Murder?" All color leached from the suspect's face. "Murder?" he squeaked again.

Ziva leaned in. "Murder. You will be lucky to receive life in prison, seaman."

"Ma'am, I didn't murder anyone! We were just having some fun! Honest! She walked out of there every time, went to do her gig at the club!"

Which was how they found out that not only was the Rose of Glory dancing with Seaman McDonough, but Seaman Forrest, and Seaman Roy, and three more of the seamen sitting in the hall, all waiting their turn to be interrogated. The only seaman that she hadn't 'danced' with was Seaman Paoli.

Walking toward his desk after having dismissed all six seamen with admonitions not to leave town, DiNozzo glared at Seaman Paoli's record. "Was it because he's newly married, or because he only worked the day shift, never pulled evenings or nights?"

Ziva too was unhappy. "We are still no further along to finding who is diverting the weapons."

McGee added, "or who tried to kill Abby."

They were still contemplating that when DiNozzo's cell rang. He glanced briefly at the window of the cell before putting it to his ear. "Yes, boss?"

He listened, and the others watched as his face paled. DiNozzo slowly closed up the device. His eyes sought theirs. "Let's go," he told them woodenly. "It's Abby."


	6. Missed Exit

"They've taken her back to surgery," Gibbs repeated for the third time, his head in his hands, sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room.

"This happens, Jethro." Ducky was the voice of reason. "There very well may have been a tear somewhere that didn't show itself until the stress of healing took place. This is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected in an injury such as this. The trick is to find the tear and tie it off. Abby is in good hands, Jethro."

"Right."

Ducky sought out the other three's eyes. The message was clear: distract Gibbs. Get his mind off what was going on here.

DiNozzo obliged. "Boss, the seamen are a dead end. Everyone of them was jumping Jennifer Rose's bones; she was coming on to them almost nightly."

"No evidence that it was for money," Ziva added.

"We may find that poor Miss Rose was addicted to sexual activity," Ducky suggested. "Her behavior was consistent with a diagnosis of nymphomaniasis."

Gibbs raised his head. "Barcodes?"

"Nothing, boss. Not yet," McGee amended. "It's looking pretty certain that that's the way the crates are being diverted. We just haven't yet found out how the barcodes are being altered. With all the activity last night, it's a pretty good bet that Konietska wasn't going to risk going in."

Gibbs sought out Ziva. "We've established that it's him?"

"Not for certain," Ziva replied. "Probable, but the evidence is circumstantial and likely to remain so. He has managed to pull similar operations all over the world."

"Find out how," Gibbs ordered. He stopped, thinking. "Abby…"

"Boss?" DiNozzo prodded, when their team leader failed to respond.

The fire was back in Gibbs's eye. "Abby gave me a partial plate," he told them. "Virginia plates, with the letters B and D. Dark sedan. McGee, run them. See what matches up with the seamen from the warehouse."

"On it, boss." At last; something to work with.

"DiNozzo, Ziva, follow up with whatever McGee pulls out of the DMV database."

"Warrants? Pretty skimpy—"

"We won't need warrants, DiNozzo." Gibbs whacked DiNozzo over the head. DiNozzo could have cheered. Gibbs glared at him. "These are not well-paid soldiers. They park their cars on the street. Go _look_ at them, DiNozzo. Look at the plates. See which car has some of Abby's hair on the bumper."

"Got it, boss." DiNozzo turned to go.

Ducky wasn't finished. "And you, Jethro?"

Gibbs turned obstinate. "Staying right here, Ducky." His voice gave off warning signals, clear as day.

Ducky knew they were there and chose to challenge them. "You've stayed by Abby's side for more than twenty-four hours, Jethro. You need to take a break."

"Tell that to Abby, when she comes—"

Ducky faced the other three. "Agent DiNozzo, will you bring the car around? Agent Gibbs will be joining you in a moment."

"Dr. Mallard—"

"The car, Mr. DiNozzo," Ducky interrupted.

"Ducky—"

"Would you excuse us for a moment?" Ducky dismissed Gibbs's team. "Thank you."

***

"Got it, boss," McGee called out. He put the data up onto the screen for all to see.

Gibbs had worked in silence, had ridden back to headquarters with equal lack of verbiage, and all three of the agents could see the steam rising from his ears as he exited the hospital. Whatever Dr. Mallard had said, it had sent the team leader striding from the hospital with his tail between his legs.

Gibbs had disappeared into the locker room, emerging a few minutes later looking fresher and with a clean shave, but with no other instructions for them. He had merely seated himself at his desk, glaring at all the papers and files that had been received over the past twenty-four hours.

DiNozzo sat down at his desk and immediately spotted the rose left there earlier.

There was no card. "What's this?" he asked.

Normally, there would be a clear note of satisfaction in DiNozzo's voice, a sort of 'look at me, some girl gave me a rose' message. Not this time; DiNozzo wasn't in the mood.

Not the time for joking around, and McGee regretfully gave up all the amusing lines that he'd concocted in the few minutes that had followed delivery of the flower. He settled for the plain and unvarnished truth. "Some guy dropped it off."

"Delivery boy?"

"No. Didn't ask for a signature, not wearing a uniform. Wouldn't leave his name, either," McGee added. "I'm sure they have it at the front desk, if you think you know who it might be."

DiNozzo froze, but only for a moment. "Tall, skinny guy?"

"Yeah. You know him—"

"Dark hair? Kind of wimpy looking?"

"Yes, I suppose—"

DiNozzo didn't need to hear any more. With two fingers, he picked up the rose and deliberately dropped in into the trash.

Gibbs watched the scene without interest. "Problem, DiNozzo?"

"Not any more, boss."

Gibbs grunted. "Good." He turned to more important things. "What've you got, McGee?"

McGee dismissed the mystery of the rose. He'd make sure to look up the name in the visitor's log and file it away somewhere until he needed it for blackmailing purposes, but right now the overriding goal was to nail the bastard who'd run Abby down. _And_ hook the murderer, who might or might not be one and the same, but McGee would settle for one bastard, on his way to getting locked up. "Ran the DMV on our suspects, boss, and came up with three matches for the make and model crossed with the letters that Abby saw on the license plate: Seaman Roy, Seaman Forrest, and Captain Black."

"Captain Black?" Ziva was surprised. "His plates match, too?"

"Frankly, I threw his name in on a whim," McGee admitted. "I ran everyone whose name could be connected with Warehouse 352, and he's in charge of it. He has a secretary, and I added in her name but she drives a Mustang with D.C. plates. No match there."

"So we have three potential vehicles," Gibbs mused. "Get your gear, people. DiNozzo, Ziva: check out Roy and Forrest. McGee, you're with me."

"Right, boss." McGee grabbed his kit and hustled to catch up with the team leader.

Ziva looked at DiNozzo. DiNozzo looked at Ziva. They both shook their heads.

McGee was in for a rough time.

Gibbs was not a happy man, which meant anyone in his wake would be catching it from all sides.

***

Gibbs drove in grim silence, and McGee rode in _terrified_ silence. McGee really wished that he dared to ask what Ducky had said to Gibbs to make him obey the medical examiner, and he wished that he dared to ask how Gibbs expected to approach Captain Black.

Of course, what he really _really_ wished for right then was an end to the drive. Gibbs drove as though he were steering a tank on a battlefield: he had some place to get to, and enough power and weight to crush anything and everything in his path without blinking twice, and that was before he considered using the fixed mount automatic on the turret.

McGee blinked twice.

Gibbs pulled into the parking lot where the workers on the naval base put their cars. There was some hundred vehicles there, ranging from high end two-seater chick magnets to oversized SUVs capable of climbing Mt. Everest for a picnic lunch next Tuesday. Warehouse 352 was two blocks away, with a few more office type buildings marching up the other side of the road. The few trees that were planted nearby had long since given up hope of retaining their leaves as autumn approached with a cool air flow. One uniformed type glanced curiously at them before disappearing into one of the buildings.

Gibbs got out of his car, McGee hastily scrambling out from the passenger's side. Gibbs pointed to the far end of the parking lot. "Start."

Which led McGee to believe that Special Agent Team Leader Gibbs wanted him to scan the parked cars and look for the license plate that matched Captain Black's sedan. McGee hustled to the indicated corner and paced his way along the lines of parked cars.

Gibbs was the one to find the car. "McGee," he bellowed.

"Coming, boss."

Gibbs pointed it out. "Pictures, McGee."

McGee pulled his camera out of his pack, almost dropping the electronic marvel in his haste to obey. Captain Black's car was an older model, American made and shiny black but with more than a little dust covering it. McGee walked around to the front, snapping a picture of the license plate before zooming in on the bumper. If this was the car, he reasoned, then the bumper would have been the part to come in contact with a human body.

There were no dents, no scratches, nothing to indicate that this car had struck Abby. McGee made certain to bend over and get a close up, anything that might give it away.

It wasn't looking good. Or, rather, it was looking very good for Captain Black. The dust which covered the car and the bumper all looked undisturbed and not at all likely to have been involved in an attempted assassination by motor vehicle just yesterday. Gibbs walked around the black sedan, looking at it from every angle, scowling.

"Can I help you?" A cool voice, and questioning.

McGee jumped, feeling his heart settle back into a normal rhythm as he recognized the voice. "Captain Black," he said, trying for a Gibbs-like calm. "This is—"

"Special Agent Gibbs." Gibbs did not stick out his hand. "We've met, McGee."

"You're interested in my car?"

"Not any more."

"Mind if I ask why?"

"Looking for a car involved in a hit and run."

"And you think that mine was involved, Agent Gibbs?"

"Not any more." It was a good line, so it got repeated.

"That's good to know. How about the murder in my warehouse?"

Gibbs ignored the question. "Where were you, Captain Black, yesterday afternoon?"

Black didn't have to wonder about that. "In my office, Agent Gibbs. My secretary can confirm that I left after five. Have you gotten any further with investigating the murders in my warehouse?"

"When I do, Captain Black, you'll be informed." Gibbs continued to survey the sedan from all angles.

He was interrupted by his cell going off, and he pulled it out of his pocket, ignoring the captain. "Gibbs," he answered shortly. "What is it, DiNozzo?" Brief pause. McGee saw Gibbs stiffen. "How bad, DiNozzo?"

***

"What if the car is inside the garage?" Ziva complained. "Tony, slow down! You're going to miss the house."

"Ziva, this guy is lucky that he can afford to live off base," DiNozzo told her. "If he has a garage, I'm going to tell McGeezer to repeat the financials to find what source of income he missed."

"So if we do not find his car on the street, that will improve his desirability as a suspect."

"You got it. What kind of car does he drive? 'Sedan' doesn't cut it, Ziva."

Ziva consulted her notes. "It is a 1998 Ford Taurus sedan, black. Tony, slow down. That's the one, fourth from the corner."

"He in it?"

"I do not see him."

"The schedule said that he worked the night shift last night, after we cleaned up the crime scene. He's probably sleeping."

"Then Seaman Roy will not interfere with our investigation." Ziva released her seatbelt, getting out a bare second ahead of DiNozzo.

DiNozzo reached into the back seat of his car, pulling out the camera. "Look like anything?"

"Perhaps." Ziva went back to mulling over the evidence.

DiNozzo scrutinized the front bumper, focusing the camera lens. From Gibbs's description, the oncoming sedan had hit Abby on the driver's side. _Click_. Of course, things were happening a little fast, and Gibbs himself had admitted that he didn't have the best angle. _Click_. Gibbs's attention, too, was on something a good deal more precious. _Click_. Better to get all parts of the bumper, and the front grill as well. _Click_. If this were Abby asking for pictures, she'd be requesting a close-up of the grill, to see if the grill design matched the injuries on the victim. _Click_.

Abby _was_ the victim.

Vicious _click_, the camera shaking before he realized what was happening. _Okay, that's one picture that won't show us anything._

"The car has been recently washed," Ziva noted. "Deliberate?"

"Yes, Ziva, I think it was deliberate. Very few people wash their cars by accident." It would have been funny if they were in the mood for laughing. DiNozzo peered at the grill. "There's a dent here. A scratch." _Click_.

Ziva looked over his shoulder. "Old."

"Maybe." DiNozzo got another shot of it, just to be on the safe side. Dammit, he _wanted_ to nail somebody for this crime!

Ziva voiced her partner's worry. "We haven't heard from Ducky," she grumbled. "What's going on? It's been two hours. Surely he could let us know."

DiNozzo bit his lip. "No news is good news, Ziva."

"No, it isn't, Tony. In my world, when you don't hear from someone or about them, it means that they are either dead or planning something—"

_Crack_.

Ziva cried out, stumbling against the dark sedan, clutching her arm. DiNozzo had just enough time to spot a flash of bright red blood before he recognized the sound: gunfire.

There was no time for conscious decisions. DiNozzo simply _reacted_. His gun replaced the camera in his hand, and before they both knew it he had dragged his wounded partner around to the other side of the suspect vehicle for whatever meager cover it could offer. "Ziva?"

"Where did the shot come from?" Her gun too was clutched in her hand, her other hand trying valiantly to staunch the flow of blood.

DiNozzo had already localized the shooter. "Across the street. How bad is it?"

"A scratch. Can you get to him?"

Looking at her face, DiNozzo didn't believe the woman. Her arm hurt more than 'a scratch'. But: priorities. Ziva's arm wouldn't hurt at all if he let her get killed. "Call for back up, Ziva. I'm going to see if I can take this bastard out."

"Tony—"

"Do it, Officer David!" DiNozzo didn't give her the opportunity to object.

Quick look: no glints of metal, nothing to say that a flurry of bullets was imminent. In the back of his mind, DiNozzo acknowledged that there had only been a single shot. By design, or was the shooter armed only with a rifle and not an automatic? If it was an automatic, they were both dead unless back up was right around the corner.

No time like the present. DiNozzo shoulder-rolled to the next piece of cover—a rusted and broken down jeep ticketed three times over and due to be towed—and hid behind the back wheel.

Nothing. No shots. DiNozzo risked a quick look, didn't collect a lead slug between his eyes. He chanced a longer look: nothing.

"He's gone," DiNozzo called to Ziva, standing up slowly, ready to dive back down if he was wrong.

He wasn't. No more shots were fired, and in the distance they could both hear the roar of a car engine being pushed to the limits of four wimpy cylinders.

Ziva slumped against the side of Roy's car, blood leaking out from between her clenched fingers, her face pale. DiNozzo fetched the med kit from his own car. "Let me look."

"Tony…" Ziva gave in, far too easily in DiNozzo's opinion.

"Back up's coming?"

"They'll be here any minute." Ziva let him do as he would, strapping a tight pressure bandage over her arm to try to hold back the red flood.

DiNozzo pulled off his jacket and wadded it up into a small pillow, easing his partner down flat before she could fall over. "I hope you realize that I wouldn't sacrifice this jacket for just anybody, David."

"You're always taking off your clothes at the sight of a woman, Tony."

A whisper. That line ought to have been delivered with acerbity tempered by ferocity. DiNozzo hoped that back up would get here soon.

***

"It just doesn't make sense," Gibbs told his team, his fury barely leashed. "First Abby, and now Ziva. What the hell is going on?"

The one good thing, Gibbs reflected, was that Ziva was going home in another few minutes. She was lying on a stretcher, her arm was in a sling, she was pumped up on narcotics and antibiotics with prescriptions for a few more, but she was breathing and her heart was beating, sending what was left of her blood coursing through her veins. Gibbs had met them in the Emergency Department, had in fact beaten the ambulance to the door and had been about to tear through a few dozen clerks before he realized that his agent hadn't yet arrived from the scene of the shooting. Waiting for some of the hospital's finest to finish with Ziva was not a task he undertook with grace.

They had some breathing space, and Gibbs was determined to use it. McGee had come back from his errand of checking with Ducky, the news being good: Abby was out of surgery and once again the surgeon and Ducky felt that she was doing well. Gibbs hoped that this time they'd be right.

"What have we got?" The question wasn't rhetorical. It was designed to regroup, to think about the possibilities before the situation got any worse. Gibbs kept his voice down, mindful of the unsecured area that they were in. "We have a dead seaman guarding a warehouse where crates of weapons are getting misdirected by barcodes that look right but aren't. We've got a dead girlfriend sleeping with just about every seaman guarding the place. On top of that, they tried to kill Abby, and now Ziva. What's the connection?"

McGee tried to be logical. "Abby's only connection with the case is that she was working the evidence from the crime scene."

"That we know of," Ziva put in from the stretcher. "Could she have some connection that we are unaware of?"

"But why did they go after you, Ziva?" DiNozzo asked. "Where's your connection? Aside from working with Abby, that is."

"Her connection is pretty obvious, DiNozzo," Gibbs reproved. "She's investigating the case, along with the rest of us. There's something that someone doesn't want us to put together, and we need to find out what it is." He handed out orders. "DiNozzo, take Officer David home. Find out everything she knows about Konietska, then check out her place, make sure that it's secure."

"Gibbs!"

"That's an order, DiNozzo. Don't let her talk you out of anything." Gibbs rode over the Israeli agent's objection. "McGee."

"Boss."

"Go over all the evidence that we brought in. Pull some of the forensics people from other labs, get them to help. Find out what's so damn important that somebody tries to kill two of our own. Oh, and McGee?"

"Yes, boss?"

"I want the book on Captain Black. Make that a priority, McGee."

***

"Ducky?" Gibbs poked his head in through the door to the hospital room.

"Keep your voice down, Jethro," Ducky told him quietly. "She's sleeping."

His lab rat looked a hell of a lot better than the last time he'd seen her, that Gibbs had to admit. There was actually some color in her face, not that she had much to begin with. There was a difference between 'gothic pale' and 'losing blood pale', and Gibbs was pleased to see that Abby was heading back to her usual Goth-child appearance. He was not nearly as well pleased to view that both black eyes had attained a glory worthy of a prize fighter.

He scowled. Still too much medical junk around, even for a hospital room. There were no fewer than three half-empty bags of fluid dangling from the ceiling with long plastic tubes taped to her arms. Tubes seeping from beyond the standard white hospital-issue blankets suggested concepts better left to sadistic imaginations. More wires sprouted from underneath an extraordinarily unattractive hospital gown.

Gibbs thought she was the most beautiful sight that he'd ever seen.

"I am _not_ asleep." Indignant, and well narcotized.

Ducky smiled. "I beg your pardon, my dear," he told her. "Agent Gibbs, your witness is not asleep. She is merely resting her not inconsiderable wit."

"Oh?" Gibbs raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, Jethro." There was a twinkle in the medical examiner's eye. "I will merely inform you that Miss Sciutto can relate a number of peccadilloes from your past that I was heretofore unaware of, and leave it at that." He rose from his chair, ostentatiously checking his watch and finally removing his hand from Abby's. "I shall give you the amount of time that it takes me to walk to the nurses' station and wheedle a cup of coffee from the ladies, Jethro."

Gibbs watched his friend exit, seating himself in the still warm chair and sliding his own hand around Abby's. "How are you doing, Abby?"

"Gibbs, this is the most amazing feeling," she told him, slurring her words. "I mean, this feeling is wild. This is really good stuff that they're giving me."

Gibbs smiled. "Just don't get too used to it." He turned serious. "Abby, what can you remember about the accident?"

"Is that what happened, Gibbs?"

His heart sank. "You don't remember anything about it?"

"No." Now worried, Abby tried to open her eyes, and couldn't get them to widen more than a swollen slit. "Gibbs, I don't! What happened?"

Gibbs went for calm. Someone had to do it, and Abby wasn't capable of the task even at the best of times. "You got hit by a car, Abby. Yesterday you gave me a partial on the license plates. Do you remember that?"

"Gibbs, what day is it?" Abby started to get frantic.

He shushed her. "It's okay, Abby. It's Wednesday."

"'Wednesday's child is full of woe'," she quoted, trying to sit up and failing utterly. Gibbs eased her back down onto the pillow, both marveling and fearing at how frail she felt in his hands. She stared at him with terrified eyes. "Gibbs, why can't I remember?"

"You got hit by a car," he soothed. "This is normal." It was. He'd been hit in the head himself on too many occasions. Losing an hour or so was a disconcerting feeling, never mind a few days of life. "It'll come back to you in time." _Maybe_. "Can you remember the case we were working on?"

Somehow, Gibbs decided, Abby accessed another part of the computer masquerading as her mind to dredge up a multitude of facts, a part that hadn't come in contact with a car bumper or the pavement nearby. She blinked, and information spouted forth. "Seaman Michael McDonough, found dead in Naval Warehouse 352 of apparent blunt force trauma. Murder weapon conclusively proven to be the two by four in the vicinity, as evidenced by matching the size and shape of the fatal wound to the size and shape of the two-by-four. Corroborating evidence was supplied in the form of matching wood fibers found inside the wound demonstrating identical conformation with the two by four. Minimal additional clues were found at the sight; most can be explained away by normal warehouse operations. Footprints in the dust were found at the site and, as a working premise, as presumed to belong to the murderer. Those footprints suggest a man, approximately five foot eight to five foot ten, weighing one hundred seventy five pounds, plus or minus sixteen pounds." Abby blinked again, and then winced with the discomfort. "Is that right, Gibbs?"

Gibbs smiled. "More than okay, Abbs. You're a wonder." He turned sober once more. "It's okay that I left Ducky to stay with you?"

"Perfectly, Gibbs," she assured him. "Ducky and me, we had a little talk."

"What did you talk about, Abby?" This could turn lethal to his self-respect.

"You, Gibbs."

Yup. Lethal. "And—?"

Abby smiled at him. One side of her mouth was bruised and swollen and didn't work as well as the other side, but Gibbs found it incredibly heart-warming. Abby looked him straight in the eye through blackened orbs. "Delegation," she said. "See you later, Gibbs."

Gibbs escaped with his self-esteem intact.


	7. Two Roads Diverge

"DiNozzo?"

"One Officer David, dropped off at her place, kicking and screaming that she can still work, boss."

"Her place secure?"

"Tighter than a—" DiNozzo checked his terminology on the spot. "Ziva has some of her own methods to show that no one entered her place while she was out. I arranged for a bodyguard, too."

"Bet she wasn't pleased about that," McGee snickered.

"No, McGee, I'm sure she wasn't. I presume that you've completed your assignment, since you have time to make fun of DiNozzo?"

"Sorry, boss." McGee shut up, and put up the big screen, pulling up the dossier on Captain Black. The head shot showed the man they had met at Warehouse 352 the night of the murder: an unprepossessing specimen with a full head of dark hair and a shadow that threatened to make twice daily shaving a necessity. "Captain Nathan Black, ten year Navy man, decorated Afghanistan for bravery under fire. Currently assigned to a post at the navy docks, in charge of security for all ten warehouses at the dock, and has been doing it for the last six months. He's five foot eight, weighs one hundred seventy seven pounds at his last physical which is an increase of eight pounds over his fighting weight in Afghanistan."

"Better food here Stateside," DiNozzo suggested.

McGee ignored the peanut gallery. "Single, never been married, no children. Lives comfortably in Cox Corner, Virginia. Has a moderately-sized bank account, and dabbles in stocks. Doesn't live beyond his means, and nothing to indicate that his income is anything more than it ought to be."

Gibbs frowned at the screen. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn't coming together. "He make any recent expensive purchases, McGee?"

"You mean, like the ruby ring seen on Jennifer Rose's finger? No, boss." Unaccountably, McGee flushed.

"McGee?"

DiNozzo was amazed. "How did you get into his credit card accounts? Probie, did you go for a warrant?"

"Uh, no…"

This sounded as though it had the word 'hazing' written all over it. DiNozzo happily gave in to temptation. "Then how did you find out that our captain didn't buy the ring? Anything to suggest that Black was the one to give it to her?"

"I, uh, did a search of burglaries in the last six months, boss," McGee confessed. "A similar ring was stolen from the home of Ms. Theresa Meredin-Bonaventure, ex-wife of lobbyist Jack Bonaventure—"

"Are you saying that Black stole the ring to give to Jennifer Rose?"

"No, Tony, that is not at all what I'm saying," McGee said firmly. "I'm only saying that Black didn't purchase the ring, not through conventional channels. We don't know who gave the ruby to Ms. Rose." He snorted. "Can you see Captain Black climbing into the second story window and cleaning out the jewelry box? I can't."

"Then how did our little Miss Rose of Glory get the ring, Probie? Huh?"

"Good question, DiNozzo. Go find out," Gibbs interrupted.

McGee tossed a smirk in DiNozzo's direction.

"McGee. Go with him."

The smirk flipped its orientation into a frown.

***

Seaman Forrest was on duty at Warehouse 352. Nothing had moved in or out, and wouldn't until NCIS rescinded its cease and desist order pending completed investigations of the irregularities surrounding said warehouse, but the place still needed to be guarded and until charged, all six seamen were still available for whatever duty the Navy happened to throw at them.

He came to attention, not certain whether or not to offer a salute. Neither visitor was in uniform, and neither one was military. The old dictum came to mind: 'if it moves, salute it'. Seaman Forrest saluted.

"Anything moving inside?" DiNozzo asked, politely ignoring the salute.

"No, sir." The salute came down but the formality did not.

"Relax, guy," DiNozzo told him. "We're not after you." _Maybe_.

"Sir?"

McGee produced a photo of the ruby ring that had been found in Jennifer Rose's apartment, the one that Ziva had noticed—was it less than twenty four hours since the woman's death? McGee found it hard to believe. Too much had happened during the intervening time—and showed it to Forrest. "Ever see this before?"

DiNozzo watched Forrest's face carefully, but close scrutiny wasn't needed. Forrest's flinch was worthy of an eight point three on the Richter Scale. "I see that you have."

"No, sir," Forrest hastily denied.

DiNozzo moved in, getting into the seaman's personal space. "Perjury, seaman. You don't want to go there. Not in a murder investigation."

"No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I mean…"

This was too easy. DiNozzo took the photo from McGee's fingers. "I'd take another look, Forrest, and come up with the answer that we're looking for. Do you really think that life behind bars, covering for a murderer, is how you want your naval career to end? Where'd you see this ring?"

"Lapini!" Forrest blurted out, having quickly decided that his friendship with his fellow navy seaman wasn't worth his own freedom. "John Lapini! He showed it to me a few weeks ago, said that someone gave it to him."

"Who gave it to him?" McGee tried to crowd in.

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"Why would someone give a man a woman's ring?" DiNozzo asked.

"You gotta ask him!" Forrest insisted.

"We will," DiNozzo assured him. "We will."

***

"Sir, you can't go in there." The aide behind the desk stood up, ready—all five foot three of her—to prevent the six foot ex-Marine from entering Captain Black's office.

"NCIS," Gibbs growled, flashing his ID, prepared to give her all of three seconds to tell him why he shouldn't barge into Black's office.

"Sir—" the aide stood her ground.

"Unless there's an admiral or better in there, you can tell Captain Black that he's going to see me right now."

"Sir, he's not in there."

That took Gibbs aback, but only for a moment. He allowed a flicker of dismay to cross his face. "Where is he?"

"At home, sir. He called in sick, sir."

It fit. It fit too damn well. "Get him on the phone."

She tried. There was no attempt to call the wrong number, or give any sort of signal. "No answer, sir. Just an answering machine."

"Don't leave any message," Gibbs told her. He handed her a card. "If you hear from him, call me. Don't tell him that I was looking for him, understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Damn. Damn. Gibbs had a bad feeling that Black was one step ahead of him.

But why the hell would Black put himself at risk by taking pot shots at Ziva David and mowing down Abby? What was the connection? More to the point, if Black was who Gibbs thought he was, why had he _missed?_

***

"DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, Boss?" DiNozzo was driving; he wanted to get to Lapini's place sometime before quitting time. That wouldn't happen with Granny McGee driving, and since it was DiNozzo's car, DiNozzo had taken the wheel.

"Black's place. Now."

"On it." DiNozzo put up his cell and tossed a look at McGee. "Buckled in, McGreen in the Face?"

"Tony—!"

Tony DiNozzo grinned. He loved it when he had a legitimate excuse to squeal the tires. Made it even better when he got McGee to squeal along with them.

***

Gibbs met them in front of Black's town home. It was a center unit, one that showed moderate upkeep but that Black hadn't bothered to personalize his outdoor space. It looked depressingly sterile. "No one home," he informed them. "No movement inside, no car out front."

"Any car in the garage?"

"You see a garage attached to this townhouse, McGee?"

"Sorry, boss. Shall I call for a warrant?"

"Based on what evidence, McLawyer?" DiNozzo asked with a healthy dose of sarcasm. He struck a pose. "Oh, gee, I heard something. It sounded like a cry for help. Or was it a cat in heat?" He shook his head dolefully. "I guess we'll just have to bash the door down, in case that was Captain Black inside, calling for help."

"I wouldn't bother, DiNozzo." Gibbs slipped a small case of lock picks back into the pocket of his jacket. He pushed the door open. "It seems to be unlocked. How careless of the good captain."

"Oh. Right."

The three slipped inside.

"Clear."

"Clear in the kitchen, boss."

"Clear out back, too, boss."

Black had quiet tastes; the carpets looked new and bland, the furniture as though he rarely sat on them. One corner of the sofa had faded slightly in the sun entering through the front window tastefully edged in brown drapery. There were no pictures, no photos of any family, extended or otherwise. The place could have been a hotel room, for all of the personalization that it showed. The two bedrooms on the second floor demonstrated the same lack of interest; merely places to lie one's head down for a good night's sleep. There was some doubt that sleeping had taken place in either of the bedrooms: the beds looked little used, with a fine shimmer of dust on the top of the dresser.

DiNozzo had the best view of it. "Boss, this was not a guy who was getting any. I can't see bringing any chick into a sanitized version of a middle class hotel room like this."

"Not everyone has your tastes, Tony," McGee reproved.

"Don't tell me that _your_ bedroom is like this, McChaste. This is—"

"I'm not getting into this argument, Tony."

"Look at this," Gibbs interrupted.

DiNozzo whistled softly. He saw immediately what Gibbs was getting at.

Gibbs was looking at Captain Black's closet. There wasn't much in it, only some three identical versions of the captain's uniform, all neatly hung up on hangars. There were a few pair of skivvies on the shelf above, accompanied by an equivalent number of socks. There were no shoes, and, far more significant to DiNozzo's mind, no civvies. Nothing for an off-duty naval officer to hang around in. Nothing to go bar-hopping in. Nothing to take the nieces and nephews to the zoo.

"A front." Gibbs was grim. "A front for what?" He made another decision. "See if you can find some fingerprints in this place. McGee, run whatever you find through the computers."

"Boss, we don't have a warrant—"

"Did I say we'd be taking this to a judge, McGee?" Soft tone, full of menace.

McGee gulped, really hoping that the menace was directed at Captain Black and not at himself. "No, boss. On it."

"Where are you going?" DiNozzo asked.

"We need a fresh print from Captain Black's office," Gibbs replied, "one that we _know_ was deposited in the past few days. Oh, and DiNozzo?"

"Yes, boss?"

"Feel free to follow up on the ruby ring."

***

"How did you know, boss?" McGee wanted to know.

Gibbs crossed to his desk, setting down his cup of coffee. "Know what, McGee?"

"The fingerprints. I mean, he looks like his photo. What made you suspect?"

"You'll have to be a bit more specific, McGee."

McGee pulled up the computer screen. "I ran the prints that we took from Black's townhouse. There was no match; nothing at all. I ran them through DMV, through all of the military records, through Interpol; nothing. Whoever left prints in Black's place is not known to any of them."

"Including the military?"

"Including the military, boss. Those prints from both the townhouse and Black's office do not match the prints on file for Captain Black. Now, here's the interesting thing." McGee toggled another couple of buttons, and a new fingerprint flashed up. "The print on the left is the print that you lifted from Captain Black's office. The print on the right is the file print for Captain Black, taken ten years ago when he enlisted."

"They don't match." It wasn't hard to see. The whorls were obviously different.

"They don't match," McGee confirmed. "But the recent prints do match the prints that we obtained from the townhouse. Our Captain Black from Warehouse 352 spent time in that townhouse, and the Captain Black of ten years ago did not." He turned to face Gibbs. "Boss?"

"Yes, McGee. We've got an imposter."

***

One ruby ring, coming up. How the hell did Seaman John Lapini, roommate of Seaman Michael McDonough, get an expensive ruby ring? And a woman's ring, no less? Saving up for something like that on a seaman's pay would take years, and Lapini wasn't old enough for anything to have taken years. As Forrest had said, someone must have given it to him. Lapini couldn't afford to buy it on his own, not even from a pawn shop.

Ruby ring, misdirected crates. No connection there, no matter what anyone said. Captain Black was the one under suspicion. The guy's prints didn't match those on his service jacket, and that raised everyone's hackles. Lapini was just a bystander; it wasn't his fault that his roommate came up against a heavy duty gangster type. Still…

DiNozzo's hand slipped to his gun in its holster, checking the safety, feeling slightly more comforted by the weight. There was no reason to think that he'd need it, nothing to say that Lapini was involved. Hell, there was no reason to think that the ruby ring was involved. It only belonged to a murdered woman, and the ring wasn't the motive. They'd found it in her jewelry box in her small one room apartment when they done the routine follow up. Technically, it wasn't even Jennifer Rose's ring, since it was stolen property.

Still, Gibbs liked things tidy. They needed to find Black, or the guy masquerading as Black, but the ruby ring was hanging out there and Gibbs wanted to know how, why, what, when—all the stuff that later on might come up. So here sat one Anthony DiNozzo, pulling up in his car to the apartment building that Seaman John Lapini called home when he wasn't on board his ship, the place that the seaman probably would be right now if his roommate hadn't had the foolishness to get himself killed.

McGee carefully closed the car door, getting out of the passenger's side. "I don't get it."

"What don't you get, Probie?"

"What's up with the ring? How does it fit in?"

So McGee was wondering about that, too. Why didn't that make DiNozzo feel better? "Good question, Probie."

"Well, do you have an answer, Tony?"

"Yup."

Silence.

"Gonna share?"

"Nope."

"Then you don't really have an answer."

"Yup. Let's go get the answer."

Lapini was home to DiNozzo's knock, let them in with sullen grace. "What do you want?"

There were packing crates all over; Lapini had busied himself with going through his former roommate's things, sorting and boxing up whatever wasn't worth throwing away. The crates were neatly stacked in one corner of the room; the live computer screen indicated that Lapini was treating himself to a break from the arduous work with a well-earned game of solitaire. By the looks of it, he was losing. Badly.

There was also an open can of beer next to the computer, and three more empty cans peering out over the lid of the trash. If it wasn't obvious where the liquid was ending up, there was a heavy odor coming from Lapini's lips.

Hell, DiNozzo supposed he couldn't blame the guy. It wasn't every day you were forced to clear out your roommate's things because he was murdered. In a way, the beer made DiNozzo's job easier: a suspect drowning his sorrows over a man's death was less likely to be a murderer. Lapini was simply a man mourning the loss of a friend the best way he knew how.

DiNozzo switched tactics, giving McGee the eye to tell the cyber-geek to keep his mouth shut. DiNozzo was going to handle this one. There was no need to come on strong with this kid, for that's what he really was: a kid. Enlisted straight out of high school, even needed his mom's permission to sign the enlistment papers since he was just shy of his eighteenth birthday. That's what Lapini's jacket had said, and DiNozzo saw no reason to disbelieve it. Coming on strong was not what would get DiNozzo the answers he needed. He softened his tone, and indicated the packing boxes. "Tough."

"Yeah." Surly.

"You expect that kind of stuff overseas. Not supposed to happen here on American soil."

"What do you want?"

DiNozzo caught it: a crack. The anger was still there, but it wasn't being directed at DiNozzo. "We're still looking for McDonough's killer, and we think we've got some leads." _Leads like a certain captain whose fingerprints don't match his records_. "We need your help. We're trying to close the net."

"Yeah?" Flicker of interest. Lapini tried to cover it up by picking up his beer can and taking a swig. The message was clear: I'm off duty, cop. Make this worth my while.

"Jennifer Rose was also found dead, just last night," DiNozzo told him, watching him closely for a reaction, feeling McGee beside him doing the same thing.

He got it. "Shit," Lapini said, his hand clenching the beer can. Another muscle or two, and the can would pop, DiNozzo estimated. He'd bet his badge that this kid hadn't known—and that he'd been as close to the 'Rose of Glory' as he had been to his roommate.

"How'd it happen?"

"Same place," DiNozzo told him. "The warehouse."

"Same guy that killed Mike?"

"We don't know," DiNozzo told him honestly. "That's what we're trying to find out."

"I didn't do it."

"Don't think you did." That was the truth. He could be fooled—had been, on more than one occasion—but DiNozzo knew that he was pretty good at reading people. "Just to keep the record straight: where were you last night?"

"Jimmy's place. Seaman James Proller. A buddy. Me and Jimmy, we got smashed."

Ah. That explained the bloodshot eyes. Not from crying, although shedding tears for a lost companion wouldn't be the worst tribute McDonough could have, but from a beer-induced hangover, which meant that Johnny and Jimmy had gone through a hell of a lot of beer. DiNozzo would send McGee by Seaman Proller's abode and check out the trash, just to verify the story. There would be a lot of beer cans tossed into the recycling, proving that life really sucked sometimes.

Not why DiNozzo and McGee were here. DiNozzo pulled out an eight by ten glossy of a certain ruby ring. Some of the facets glinted redly in the reflection of the lights used to take the picture, and he showed it to Lapini. "Ever see this before?" _The answer had better be 'yes'_.

It was. "Yeah," Lapini admitted. "That why they killed her? To get the ring?"

The kid thought it was a robbery gone bad? DiNozzo wished that the answer was that simple. "We don't know," he said, carefully omitting that if the ring had been stolen from the girl's corpse, then NCIS wouldn't have been able to photograph it. Lapini obviously wasn't up to thinking that clearly. "How did she get it?"

Moment of truth: would Lapini come clean? Did this innocent-looking young seaman have something to do with this whole sordid affair? DiNozzo once again felt the comforting weight of his gun in its holster.

"I gave it to her," Lapini said, and DiNozzo let out the breath that he hadn't realized that he was holding.

"Why?" That was McGee.

Lapini stared at the agent as if he only just now realized that there was a third person in the apartment. "Didn't fit," he sneered.

_Back off, Probie. I got this kid where I want him, so shut up and let me handle this_. "Maybe not your style?" DiNozzo asked.

Lapini stared at DiNozzo, and the NCIS agent could read the seaman's thoughts as if he'd shouted them from the rooftop: _do they know I'm gay? What are they going to do with that information? _

DiNozzo tossed him a bone. "Not important," he said easily. "Where'd you get it?"

Safer ground—the kid hoped. DiNozzo could read that on his face, too. "Somebody gave it to me."

"Did you know that it was stolen?" McGee slipped in.

Lapini paled, and for a moment DiNozzo wondered if the kid needed to sit down. "Stolen?"

"Stolen," DiNozzo confirmed.

Lapini swallowed hard, tossed a look toward the bathroom. That just might be his next stop, DiNozzo estimated. The beer that Lapini had rented might just go the wrong direction under the onslaught of fear. "Mike…"

"Who gave it to you?" DiNozzo pressed.

The urge to lie crossed Lapini's face.

"We could always charge you with receiving stolen property," McGee offered.

_Shut up, McGee. Didn't I tell you to let me handle this?_

"We don't think you did it," DiNozzo told him, "but we need to know how this ring came into your possession."

"You can tell us now, or you can tell us downtown—ow," McGee complained, as DiNozzo stepped on his foot.

"We'd rather not do that, guy," DiNozzo said. _There's a pretty decent chance that if we hauled you into NCIS headquarters, you'd barf in my car and it would smell like stale beer—or worse. Really don't want that_. "Who gave you the ring?"

Silence.

It came in a flash of genius. DiNozzo knew the answer, knew it as well as if Seaman John Lapini had turned on a neon sign. McGee could open up doors through computer crunching, but there was a reason that Gibbs kept DiNozzo around, and this was one of them: insight. "Did Teddy Cray give it to you?" _The guy that you recently broke up with?_

Fear, then resignation. "Yes."

Mystery solved. Just as he'd thought: the ring didn't have anything to do with McDonough's murder. The thing had been stolen, and they could turn this part of the case over to D.C. Metro cops. It was their bailiwick.

DiNozzo tucked the photo away. "It'll go into our case report, seaman, and we'll be letting the locals know about this. Don't tell Cray about it. The cops will want to ask him where he got it."

Lapini looked puzzled. "All this over a piece of junk jewelry?"

DiNozzo shook his head. "That was not a hunk of glass in that ring. That was the real deal."

Lapini sucked in his breath. "Real?" He shook his head. "And I just _gave_ it away. Man, I could have _sold_ that sucker." He snorted. "Would've served Teddy right."


	8. Two Lane Highway

Noteworthy. That was the word for it: noteworthy.

DiNozzo could count on one hand the number of times that a healthy man glowered when a beautiful woman entered the room.

It happened this time. Gibbs glowered, and he was most definitely healthy.

The beautiful woman was Ziva David—not that DiNozzo would ever admit that he found her a damn sight more than attractive, not if he wanted to keep his body parts intact—and she was wearing a sling to support one arm.

"What the hell are you doing here, David?" Gibbs wanted to know.

Ziva glared back at her boss, giving as good as she was getting here. "I work here, Gibbs."

"Not now, you don't. You're on medical leave."

DiNozzo covered a smile. This was going to be good.

"If you think that I am going to remain at home, doing nothing, while you—"

"That's exactly what I think is going to happen, David. You're going to turn around—"

"I am going to my desk to hunt down the bastard that hit Abby—"

"Boss?" That from McGee.

"Shut up, McGee. David, you're going—"

"Gibbs, I am going to—"

"Boss?" McGee tried again.

"David, I am not having you out on the street where—"

"I either work _with_ you watching my back, Gibbs, or by _myself_—"

"Boss!"

"What!?" Both Gibbs and Ziva swung around.

McGee coughed, lowering his voice. "Uh, Agent Fornell is here."

The FBI agent covered a small smile, arms folded across his chest suggesting that he had been enjoying the scene for more than a couple of seconds. One corner of Fornell's mouth slipped upward. "Agent Gibbs. Officer David." His tone was soft, with a healthy side helping of amused. He inclined his head, short and vanishing hair doing little to impede the photons dancing around the room. He looked as he usually did, clad in a style best described as rumpled business formal. Anyone passing him on the street would have taken him for a down-trodden middle manager doing his best to keep from getting laid off in these bad economic times.

They would have been wrong. Agent Tobias Fornell was one of the best in the business.

Gibbs glared at him. "What do you want, Fornell?"

"Always a pleasure to see you, too, Jethro." Fornell remained unperturbed. "I understand that a case of yours may be overlapping with one of ours. Care to share?"

"That depends on who's doing the sharing, and who's getting the short end of the stick."

Fornell's grin was wider this time. "C'mon, Jethro. You know that you came out the winner the last time we met." He gestured toward the elevator. "Your office?"

"Wait here," Gibbs told the rest of his team. Ziva took advantage of the distraction to slide onto her desk chair, carefully hiding her wounded wing behind the monitor screen. Gibbs wasn't fooled, and let it pass. He threw a meaningful look at Fornell. "This won't take long," he added, more for Fornell's benefit than the team's.

Fornell shrugged, and headed toward the elevator.

DiNozzo waited until the elevator doors closed before asking, "what do you want to bet that our Captain Black is mixed up with the FBI?"

"No takers, Tony," McGee said. He'd lost too much money to DiNozzo to go for a sucker bet like that.

"The question is, what is the relationship?" Ziva wanted to know. "If your Homeland Security thinks that it will protect a man who nearly killed Abby…"

"There's a lot of things that Gibbs has been forced to put up with," was DiNozzo's opinion, "but that is not going to be one of them." He looked again at the closed elevator doors. "Oh, to be a fly upon the wall…"

***

Others, lesser men, would have begun the discussion with a pointed comment.

Not Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and not Special Agent Tobias C. Fornell.

"Seeing anyone currently, Jethro?"

"Only you, Fornell, here and now. The kids?"

"Still sucking my wallet dry, whatever I've got left after paying alimony to _your_ ex-wife, Gibbs. It's a good thing that there's only four years in college."

"There's always graduate school. And I told you not to marry her, Tobias."

"Don't remind me, Jethro," Fornell groaned, and got down to the point of his visit. "I need you to leave Black alone, Jethro."

"Not a chance, Tobias. He's shot at two of my people."

"I heard about that. Not him, Jethro."

"Don't have too many other suspects, Tobias. The guy who winged David was a pretty damn good shot."

"That's just it, Jethro. He winged her. If it had been Black, David would be dead." Fornell let one corner of his mouth quirk upward. "Black was pretty insulted over your lack of confidence in his skill."

"You talked to him?"

"I did."

"I want him, Tobias."

"I'm telling you, Jethro: he's not your man."

Gibbs wasn't giving in. "He killed Seaman McDonough and Jennifer Rose. He took out two of mine, Tobias." Quietly, and with feeling. "He's mine, Tobias."

"Can't give him to you, Jethro."

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Can't," Fornell affirmed. "He's one of ours. He was investigating a gun runner named Konietska. Ever hear of him?"

"Here and there. You close?"

"I wish." Fornell sighed. "Black told me that Konietska was stealing the crates from the warehouse, couldn't figure out how. He said he had a lead, then he needed to go into hiding. He only surfaced long enough to phone me for three minutes. Something about a cover getting blown, and afraid that someone was painting a target on his back," Fornell added pointedly.

"Really? Just when did he discover this 'lead'?"

"A week ago. I know what you're thinking, Jethro," Fornell added. "The lead came through before your seaman turned up dead."

"According to who?"

"According to Black."

"And you believe him?"

"We recruited him, Jethro," Fornell reproved. "He's a good man."

"I want to talk to him, Tobias," Gibbs told the FBI agent. "I need answers."

"And I told you, Jethro: he's missing. He's not answering his calls. Not since last night." Fornell let his nerves show.

"And that doesn't worry you, Tobias?"

"Of course it worries me!" Tobias shouted, then shame-facedly lowered his voice. "Of course it worries me," he repeated. "How did Konietska realize that we were on to him? That Black was after him? One of your people must have stumbled onto something."

That made sense. It also explained why Abby and then Ziva were targets. Konietska realized that one or both had something in their possession that could nail him, and he was starting to clean house of anyone who could identify him. Black would be one; there was something about Abby and Ziva that caused Konietska to think that they too could apprehend him.

However, there were some pieces that _didn't_ add up, and Gibbs made that clear. "How come Black doesn't live at his condo?"

"What?" That confused Fornell. "What do you mean?"

"Not a hell of a lot clothes there, Tobias, just a couple of uniforms. And what happened to Black's fingerprints?"

"What do you mean, Jethro?" It wasn't hard to tell that Special Agent Fornell was getting a cold icicle in his gut. "What _about_ Black's fingerprints?"

"They seem to have changed since Black enlisted some ten years ago, Tobias."

A lesser man would have told Special Agent Gibbs that fingerprints don't change. A man with a lower intelligence quotient would have insisted that Gibbs was in error, that he and his team had made a dreadful mistake and were inept, as well.

Tobias C. Fornell, however, was a top agent, and he knew when things were not going the way that he wanted. He stabbed the emergency button to the elevator, setting the car in motion once more. "I need a landline."

"All yours, Tobias." Gibbs would have been more satisfied had Fornell come up with a reasonable explanation for the fingerprints and the clothes.

Fornell boiled out of the elevator, not waiting for the doors to open before slipping through. He snatched up the phone; it happened to be on McGee's desk. It took him all of sixty seconds until he was able to utter the words that he really wanted to say: "close the borders. Put out an APB. I don't want him leaving the country."

That done, Fornell slumped tiredly against McGee's desk. He glared at Gibbs. "You couldn't have figured this out without alerting him?"

"I wasn't the one telling him to steal the weapons," Gibbs pointed out.

DiNozzo's eyes narrowed. It sounded as if some very pertinent data had been exchanged. "Boss?"

Gibbs permitted himself a small smile. "Agent Fornell is now of the opinion that Captain Black may have been taking the United States Government for a ride."

Fornell groaned. "Don't rub it in, Jethro. How'd you figure it out?"

"Simple detective work, Tobias."

"Cut the crap, Gibbs. What made you suspect him?"

"His behavior," Gibbs told Fornell. "When McGee first approached him, the man barely knew one end of a computer from another. Cool under pressure was not part of his repertoire. When I started looking at his car, when we were investigating who might have tried to run Abby down, it was an entirely different man. This Captain Black was terse and intent. He was coldly assessing the odds. The act was forgotten."

"And from that you figured out that he was your man?"

"The clothes helped," Gibbs admitted, "and the fingerprints clinched it. He's guilty, Tobias."

"How did he do it? How'd he steal the crates?"

McGee spoke up. "I have the answer, boss."

"Spit it out, McGee."

McGee put another picture up on the screen. "It was the barcodes."

"I already know that, McGee. Do you have an update for me?"

"Yes, boss. I mean, they weren't right on the crates, but they were correct in the computer which didn't make sense because the right codes got scanned into the computer system with a hand-held scanner. There shouldn't have been any way to falsify the codes, but there was. The right barcodes went into the computer, and then someone changed the barcodes on the crates just before they left the warehouse. That made it look like the right codes were there, when they really weren't."

Ziva frowned. "If someone changed the barcodes, wouldn't someone have noticed it when the crates left the warehouse? Seaman Forrest told us that the crates get scanned yet again as they leave the warehouse."

"Not in this case," McGee explained. "Somehow, shortly after the crates left the warehouse, someone got back into the computer and returned each crate to the original barcode so that to the computer it looked like nothing happened. I have the trail right here, and it leads to—"

"Captain Black," Fornell snarled. "But how did he change the barcodes on the crate? He didn't go into the warehouse. Who was working with him?"

That was Gibbs's cue. "Jennifer Rose."

"Who?"

"The stripper." Gibbs warmed to his tale. "Dr. Mallard found evidence that Seaman McDonough was AWOL in a back room with Ms. Rose. Almost every guard working the late shift admitted to doing the same thing. It wouldn't have been hard for Black—or whatever his name is—to sneak in and change a few barcodes while each guard was otherwise occupied. He wouldn't even have had to tell her what he was doing. All he had to do was offer her money to seduce a few young sailors. He did get into the warehouse, Tobias; nobody saw him do it."

"Then something went wrong."

"Then something went wrong," Gibbs agreed. "McDonough probably heard something, maybe even came out and saw Black. Black killed him, thought he could keep Ms. Rose quiet. He never counted on DiNozzo having such an extensive knowledge of the victim's acquaintances."

DiNozzo flushed.

Gibbs ignored his agent. "When Black—or whoever he is—figured out that we were going after Jennifer Rose, he killed her as well. There was nothing to link Black to Rose, or so he thought."

McGee was also getting confused. "But if he didn't think we could connect them, why did Black kill her?"

"He panicked," was Gibbs's answer. "Despite covering his tracks, we kept going after Ms. Rose. He couldn't figure out why, and he panicked."

"The ring," DiNozzo realized. "We thought that the ring had something to do with it. Instead, it was a gift from Seaman Lapini who thought that it was junk."

"Right." Gibbs nodded. "It was a red herring, but it was close enough to the truth to scare Black."

"He must have thought that Abby and Officer David had something to point them in his direction," Fornell agreed. "Okay, what did they have?"

"If we knew that, Tobias, we'd have the man in custody." Gibbs turned to his team. "McGee—"

"Computer search. Find out where the crates are headed, see if I can narrow down where Black will head to intercept the stolen goods." McGee turned back to his screen, bathing in the rays.

"Ziva—"

"I'll head down to Abby's lab. Perhaps I can discover just what evidence Captain Black was concerned about." Ziva headed for the elevator that had recently served as Gibbs's office.

"DiNozzo—"

DiNozzo made a face. "I'll turn the ring over to the D.C. cops, along with whatever evidence we can let them have. They can follow up with Cray, find out how he came by the stolen ring."

"And—?"

"Uh…then I'll check on Abby?"

"And—?"

"Uh…then I'll…I'll…" The light bulb flickered on. "I'll check on the cameras that McGee installed in the warehouse, see if they picked up anything." DiNozzo beamed, hoping that he'd come up with the right answer.

Gibbs half-smiled. "Good enough, DiNozzo. Good enough." He turned to Fornell. "Care to join me, Agent Fornell?"

Fornell scowled. "Doing what, Gibbs?"

Another mysterious smile. "Let's see if we can pick up a certain navy captain."

***

"Got him!" Fornell snapped his cell shut. "Gibbs! He's been spotted at Dulles. My people are moving in."

"Don't alarm him!" Gibbs said hurriedly. "He's good. We don't want to lose him."

"You can say that again." Fornell picked up his coat, already heading for the door. "You want to tag along?"

"He's mine, Fornell."

"Like hell, he is, Gibbs. I want to hear what he says about those crates."

"I want to hear what he has to say about a couple of dead bodies."

Fornell offered a tight smile. "If you think your team of—how many people do you have left, Jethro? Three?—can pick him up at Dulles, be my guest. I've got twenty men, all converging." The smile morphed toward satisfied; Fornell had the upper hand. "Play nice, and I'll let you talk to him."

"I've got him on murder—"

"National Security, Jethro. My hand trumps yours."


	9. Panic Stop

McGee sat back in his chair, waiting. That was the one problem with running a computer search: the waiting. Waiting for the numbers to crunch, waiting for the correlations to finish correlating—that was the downside to doing his investigations online. He leaned back, feeling bored, letting his gaze wander around the nearly empty room. _Can't even play solitaire. That would take up too much attention from the CPU and slow things down._

Gibbs: gone. He and FBI Special Agent Fornell had headed off for the airport, following up on the spotting of Captain Black. McGee hoped that the lead would come through; that would solve a lot of problems, even if the FBI refused to turn the man over to NCIS. Gibbs would get his crack at the man, and they'd be able to solve the case. Hopefully Gibbs would be able to drag out of the man why he'd gone after Abby and Ziva. Knowing Gibbs, Black didn't stand a chance in interrogation.

DiNozzo: gone. With nothing better to do, he'd gone after the cameras that McGee and Ziva had set up to try to catch someone in the act of altering the barcodes. It would have worked, McGee consoled himself, given enough time. There was always the chance that someone else was doing it, perhaps another suspect. McGee tried to look forward to scanning the tapes that DiNozzo was bringing back.

Ziva: gone. She'd gone downstairs to Abby's lab to look over what the forensics expert was working on, to try to figure out what it was that had Black so upset that he'd tried to kill them. It was a good spot for the Mossad officer; Gibbs wasn't about to let her out on the street with an arm in a sling and yet this would help move the case forward.

That brought Abby to mind. McGee wondered how she was, knowing that if anything serious was happening Ducky would be calling. He was glad that she was going to be all right—all right, that was, if they could get Black behind bars. McGee was under no illusion that either Abby or Ziva would be safe until the Black question was resolved. McGee was grateful that Ducky was with the hospitalized forensics specialist. The medical examiner was getting on in years, but the stories that McGee had heard…

Bored. The computer whirred quietly away, promising an answer in the next three hours. McGee contemplated his options: get coffee. Maybe get coffee and visit the men's room.

His eyes lit on DiNozzo's wastebasket, and he smiled. There was a single rose perched forlornly inside, wilting and turning black with dehydration. DiNozzo had responded beautifully to the discovery, dropping the thing into the trash as if it had cooties. It hadn't been the right time to offer a few choice bon mots, but McGee had patience. He could find out the name of the visitor who'd left the rose, simply by visiting the front desk. _Yeah, that would be a good way to pass the time._

Moments later he was back, a smirk on his face. Theodore Cray, that was DiNozzo's not so secret admirer. The details were in the casebook in Ziva's neat handwriting, how Cray had revealed that he'd broken up with Lapini, when Lapini was more of a suspect. Ziva, with her own smirk McGee had no doubt, had added a single line about how Cray had tried to make a play for DiNozzo. 'Mr. Cray', she had written, 'appears to be what is known as a cop groupie, attempting to attach himself to a law enforcement officer. Since his affair with a naval guard was recently rebuffed, Mr. Cray attempted to cast his net toward Special Agent DiNozzo. Special Agent DiNozzo,' she added for safety, 'conducted himself with the utmost professionalism.'

'Utmost professionalism'. Right. McGee wanted to laugh out loud. No wonder the rose got dumped into the trash.

This could get really good. McGee chose not to interrupt his own computer, instead opening up DiNozzo's box and logging on.

It didn't take long for a routine search to come up with some interesting details to taunt DiNozzo. McGee began to catalog them, preparing them for those times when he'd need them to deflect DiNozzo's own gibes. Cray himself had been in the military, honorably discharged after injuries sustained in some sort of an accident. McGee peered at the screen, getting interested despite himself. What the heck; his own computer was still struggling to gets its electronic arms around the hunk of data he'd fed it. It wasn't as though McGee had anything better to do. Well, actually, his latest novel was calling to him, but the rough draft was at home and McGee was stuck here.

What sort of accident? The record wasn't clear, and McGee started to get a clue. Cray, it appeared, had been struggling with his personal life. Some of his fellows took offense to his struggles and responded in a way that put Cray into traction at Walter Reed. The very quiet honorable discharge had occurred as soon as Cray could walk.

McGee could read between the lines. Cray made a pass at someone and paid the price. Not the way life ought to happen but then, there were a lot of times that life didn't go the way it ought to. Look at Seaman McDonough: killed for guarding a warehouse. According to Ducky, he should have died a few years hence from liver failure. Someone had cheated McDonough out of three years of life.

Past history. Cray had been out of uniform for two years. It wasn't clear what he'd been doing for those two years. McGee peered at the address on the man's driver's license. Not a bad part of town; he must have landed a decent job after discharge. That went along with what he remembered about how Cray had been dressed when the man had deposited the rose onto DiNozzo's desk.

McGee whistled silently to himself, perusing the demographic data. Cray had been doing better than merely okay: he'd earned enough to be able to afford some property outside of the D.C. area, a nice little vacation home for himself. How had he done it? McGee's interest was whetted; professional curiosity, he told himself. McGee was an NCIS agent, and looking at people's backgrounds was what he did for a living. Besides, McGee was a novelist. Taking hints from real life to meld into new and unique sorts of characters was a novelist's stock in trade. Two birds with one stone. McGee could dredge up a whole bunch of clichés to fit if he put his mind to it, but the data on the screen was far more interesting.

Very interesting. Try as he might, McGee couldn't determine the source of Cray's income. Inheritance? Maybe, although nothing of that sort popped up. Son of a rich family, enlisted for a tour so that he could go into politics and use that as a campaign slogan: 'vote for me; I defended my country.' If that was the case, it didn't quite work out the way Cray would have wanted. Somehow, 'vote for me; I defended my country and got beat up for making a pass at my fellow sailors' didn't have nearly the same impact in a country wrestling with a moral compass.

There was always the ruby ring, McGee recalled. If Seaman Lapini were to be believed, Cray had given it to Lapini, which meant that Cray had gotten the stolen item from somewhere. Not McGee's job; DiNozzo was supposed to turn the whole thing over to D.C. Metro so that they could follow up. Petty theft was not what NCIS had time to deal with, not if it was done by a civilian.

***

Escape. It would have been nice if DiNozzo could have accompanied Gibbs and Fornell to Dulles to apprehend Black, but it wasn't going to happen. Fornell had the upper hand on this one. DiNozzo sighed, trying not to feel too bad. NCIS had bested Fornell previously, so it was only fair that Fornell win this round and, if DiNozzo was going to be honest with himself, the FBI had a lot more manpower to surround and contain. Black—and DiNozzo doubted if that was the man's real name—wasn't going anywhere. Gibbs would get whatever details he needed from the guy including just why he felt the need to crunch two of NCIS's finest, and the man would go away for a minimum of ten to twenty if not life.

_Better be life in prison, just to keep the criminal safe_. Ziva they expected to occasionally get scorched around the edges; the woman was a field agent and a damn good one. But Abby? Sweet little Abby? DiNozzo felt his blood boil just contemplating the injustice. If Gibbs didn't go after Black, then DiNozzo would and that only if he beat Ziva to whatever sly and devious scheme she'd cook up on the spot. No, the soon-to-be-dishonorably-discharged Captain Black had better hope that he'd be able to keep a few dozen iron bars between himself and the NCIS team.

Warehouse 352 loomed dark and large. DiNozzo parked in the lot, noting that at this hour, with the sun descending behind the massive buildings across the Potomac, the shadows were growing and melding into each other. There were a couple of cars, only one parked sensibly under the light; DiNozzo surmised that the owner had arrived much earlier when the choice spots were available. This lot serviced more than just this warehouse. DiNozzo could see a couple of lighted offices in the building two blocks down, officer types working late.

Not what he was after. No, DiNozzo had been reduced to pick up and delivery. Why couldn't McGee retrieve the cameras? DiNozzo felt like grumbling out loud, so he did. "Why couldn't McGee get assigned to this? He put 'em up. He should take 'em down."

DiNozzo knew better. McGee, with his vaunted MIT degree, was playing with his beloved electronic marvel, trying to narrow down the window of opportunity for escape for Black. Gibbs and Fornell were using that intel to actually apply handcuffs to a very deserving set of wrists.

Pick up the cameras, and the tapes along with them. With a lot of luck that DiNozzo wasn't counting on, they'd catch Black on tape switching the barcodes on the crates. DiNozzo snorted. Fat chance! Black had been ahead of them every step of the way. No, all they needed the cameras for at this point was to maybe pick up a little more evidence for the court-martial, but again: DiNozzo wasn't counting on it.

Although…DiNozzo's brain was working furiously. If Black didn't know about McGee, if he thought that Abby would be the one to review the tapes, then perhaps that's why he went after Abby. Although that wouldn't make sense, because the cameras went up after Abby went down, and anybody with any intelligence would realize that NCIS would just bring in someone else to review the camera tapes—

It wasn't a fist. It wasn't a crowbar, or a bullet, or any of a dozen hard-edged things that DiNozzo could name without thinking twice.

It hurt just as much. It stung his eyes, his nose, his lungs as he inhaled with the shock of it all.

It hurt even more as DiNozzo realized what was happening. Someone had just sprayed something directly at him, directly at his face, something that was rapidly shutting down his ability to breathe. Something that was shutting down his ability to think, to process oxygen. Something was shutting down his ability to _live_.

Blackness closed in, leaving one lingering image:

Teddy Cray.

_What the—?_

***

"That him?"

"That's him," Gibbs confirmed. Both men picked up their pace, not trying to seem overly obvious but subtlety had been discarded in favor of need. Dulles Airport was crowded at this time of the evening, with the short business flights from Atlanta and New York all converging and the erstwhile passengers hurrying through the exit gates. There was a surfeit of dark black trench coats and leather computer bags hanging over the shoulders of those trench coats: the businessmen were traveling light, quick in and quick out, home to the upscale two bedroom condo that was all that was left after the divorce. It was an existence for too many people convinced that their job was more important than family.

It was not the existence of Special Agent Gibbs, nor Special Agent Fornell, and it was not the reason that they had arrived at Dulles International. They did not carry computer bags. They did, however, carry handguns, legally licensed to use them. Both cautiously felt for the hardware, a casual reflex that neither one was truly aware that they had done.

Neither knew what their target would do. Best case scenario: a jerk of surprise as the two agents from different organizations closed in on either side followed by a sigh of resignation and a short walk to the waiting car. Worst case: neither agent wanted to visit that thought. It was enough that muscle memory knew what to do and would respond rapidly if it came down to that.

Words: waste of time and energy. A single glance between the two sufficed, carrying the details of the plan. Gibbs parted ways with Fornell, heading to cut off one of the corridors, noting the two agents that had been stationed at the entrance to another. Fornell, he saw, was moving toward the main exit. No escape there. Surround and contain: Black was going nowhere.

_Maybe_. Captain Black had dressed himself in civvies, trying not to stand out in the sea of trench coats. He even carried the obligatory laptop bag, and Gibbs spared a moment to wonder what was in that bag. Not that it mattered much; if it was a computer, McGee could weasel out whatever was in there—assuming that the FBI didn't grab the thing first. On the other hand, there was an equally good possibility that Black had something else in there, something like a sheaf of small green papers with some presidents' faces on them and the Treasury Secretary's signature signifying that they were worth something. Gibbs blessed the vigilance of the agents stationed in the airport; it would have been easy to let this man walk onto a plane and disappear forever.

Black stood up, automatically sliding the 'computer bag' back behind his hip. Gibbs hastened his step; had something alerted the man? He couldn't see what, but how many times had Gibbs himself had that sneaky little suspicion that not everything was right? This man had survived for a very long time by doing a lot of things right. Underestimating him now was a recipe for failure.

The target moved toward the exit where the two FBI agents stood and pretend to read their magazines. One of them oh-so-casually turned his magazine around; he'd been 'reading' it upside down. Was that what had tipped off Black? There would be words exchanged if Black escaped the net. Gibbs lengthened his stride.

Black moved. His pace was too fast for someone heading toward a boarding gate. They'd been spotted; Gibbs was sure of it.

The two FBI agents abandoned any pretense of waiting for their own flight. They tossed their magazines into the nearby trash, heading directly for Black who was aiming for the center of the vast corridor leading elsewhere.

Move, counter-move. Black grabbed a passerby—a woman with an ultra-expensive pink over-sized bag for her laptop and lipstick—and shoved her at one FBI agent. The agent grabbed at the woman in an attempt to keep his balance, and they both went down in a flurry of arms and make-up. Black pushed another arriving passenger—an older man, this time—and the second FBI agent met the same fate, even as to the lipstick. Gibbs noted the surprising item emerging from the older man's pocket and dismissed it as unimportant.

No more hiding. Fornell broke into a run, pulling out his piece. "FBI! Stop where you are!"

Was it any surprise that Captain Black failed to heed a lawfully delivered order to cease and desist? Black darted through the oncoming throng, seeking to lose himself in the midst of the innocent civilians, knowing that none of the FBI agents nor the NCIS man would shoot. There were too many people around, all of whom had taken note of the situation. Screams and curses abounded, with people running like a school of fish with a shark mowing its way through the center.

Lose Black in the crowd? Not gonna happen. Gibbs himself went for the high speed chase, following Black's progress by the number of people shoved aside.

Black darted onto the moving walkway, using the flat escalator-like affair to increase his forward movement. It didn't work out quite as fast as he wanted—there were too many others that he had to dart around or push out of the way—but it still meant that the distance between himself and the FBI agents was widening.

Not so for the NCIS special agent. Gibbs _wanted_ that man! Captain Black had taken a shot at Officer David and had mowed down Gibbs's forensics specialist, and he _damn _well wasn't getting away!

In his youth, Leroy Jethro Gibbs had been a college football player and he hadn't forgotten all the old moves. Muscles that were decades older still remembered how to dodge through crowds, how to move into tight spaces and emerge unscathed. Bodies went down, pushed back and out of the way. There was no football to move toward the goal line but Gibbs had a more important goal in mind: Captain Black.

Tiny little woman in high heels: shoved to the side, squealing and going down to the dirty tiled floor. Leap over the five year old in his path. Almost trip over the rolling week-ender. Black was getting away! Gibbs doubled his efforts, dodged an obese man who out-weighed every linebacker that Gibbs had ever gone up against.

Vision narrowed down to one thing: the fleeing man. Black himself darted around people, leaving curses and bruises in his wake. The end of the moving walk way was coming close and beyond it three different options for escape.

_Not gonna happen_.

Captain Black pushed his way off of the walkway, running flat out, the computer bag flapping against his side. He spared a fast glance to see where his opponent was.

Big mistake. It slowed Black down for the fraction of a second that it took for Gibbs to make the most important tackle of his life. Gibbs left his feet, flying through the air.

He crashed into Black. People screamed, running away from the spectacle. Gibbs was pleased; less innocents to get hurt or get in the way. Black twisted as they both went down, reaching for the gun in Gibbs's hand.

Not happening. Gibbs was not about to hand this renegade captain a weapon. Black grabbed Gibbs's wrist, arms not long enough to reach the metal barrel. Gibbs hung on.

Black tried another tack. He smashed his case into Gibbs's face. Gibbs rolled back, feeling the blood gushing over his eye. _Gonna have a shiner to match Abby's, that's for sure_. Crazy what thoughts rolled through a man's brain during a fight. Where the hell was Fornell? Gibbs rolled to his feet, a micro-second after Black.

Black grabbed again at the gun. Gibbs used it as a club, bringing the barrel onto Black's own forehead, trying to give the suspect a black eye to match the one Black had already given Gibbs. _Missed; too high. Gonna need stitches only_.

Black rammed his knee into Gibbs's gut, forcing the air out. Gibbs curled in, straightened out in time to block a knuckle sandwich. Return blow—Black staggered back, and Gibbs dripped a bloody grin. _That was for you, Ziva. Now for Abby_. Gibbs moved in. _Bastard's not getting away_.

Black swung his computer case at Gibbs. Gibbs dodged. The case missed his head—but knocked Gibbs's own gun out of this hand. It skittered away along the dirty tiles, out of reach for both. Not a bad thing for Gibbs. There were times when a man needed to feel his hand smashing into a bastard's nose.

Then Black changed the rules. He darted his hand into his pocket, came out with a small but deadly handgun. He aimed.

No way was Black going to miss. Not from a distance of six feet.

And the worst part was that Abby wasn't going to get her payback.

_Blam!_


	10. Bump in the Road

_Blam!_

Captain Black staggered back, an expression of utter horror on his face and red staining his chest. The handgun dropped from his hand. He sank to his knees, toppling over like a falling tree under a lumberjack's saw.

Gibbs was too well trained to take a moment to be grateful he was alive. He moved in, kicking the gun to the side and out of Black's reach.

Blood squirted from a wound high on the chest, slowing to an ooze. Black rolled over on the floor, wanting to grab for the spot of agony and knowing that doing so would hurt all the more. Death was close.

Not much time. Gibbs grabbed Black by the shirt. "Why?" he demanded. "Why go after my Forensics?"

Black looked at him. "What…Forensics…?" Blood bubbled in his mouth, and he went limp.

"Put him down, Jethro," Fornell ordered, keeping his gun trained on the unconscious suspect. He raised his voice. "Jerry, get an ambulance here. We want to keep this one alive."

"Maybe," Gibbs growled, under his breath. "Why'd you have to plug him? We needed him to talk."

"You're welcome," Fornell snarled back. "Next time, I'll let him shoot you."

***

"Nothing," Ziva reported to McGee, dropping onto the chair behind her desk. "If there is a reason that Black tried to kill Abby, then I have not found it in her lab." She slapped the papers on her desk petulantly with her good hand. The report echoed throughout the room.

It was dark out, past the five o'clock quitting time for most of the NCIS building residents. That didn't mean much to either Ziva or McGee; both would routinely work odd and overtime hours in order to crack a case.

McGee shrugged. "The data is starting to correlate, and I think I can track the last shipment of crates to a little depot in Kuwait. I'm still having a hard time with how he altered the barcodes. Captain Black is very _very_ good with computers. He's a lot better than his record indicates. Wait a sec." He sat up. "That's it."

"McGee?" Ziva got up and crossed the room to peer over McGee's shoulder at his computer screen. Numbers and letters marched up and down in white on black columns of precision. "What am I looking at?"

"The answer," McGee told her triumphantly, pointing at the screen. "That's how he did it. The barcodes, I mean. He used the Neisenburg Convention to slip behind—"

"Words of one syllable, McGee, or I will hurt you."

An arm in a sling wouldn't stop the Mossad agent from carrying out her threat. McGee hurriedly revised his lecture. "It's a two-pronged approach, Ziva. The crates got a _new_ barcode. Without that, they'd still go straight to where the Navy wanted them. What's different about this is that Black was able to go back into the computers and convince the databases that nothing had changed. Black was never found out until something happened to make someone like us take another look at the warehouse inventory."

Ziva frowned. "That's the 'how', McGee. What about the 'why'?"

McGee lifted his eyebrows. "Ziva?"

"Why would Black ruin his own operation by killing Seaman McDonough?" Ziva persisted. "As you said, had we not intervened then Captain Black would still be contentedly running his operation, diverting military weapons to black market suppliers. And where is the money from this scheme? It has to be going somewhere."

McGee sat back. "Good question."

"I would like it better if you had a good answer, McGee."

"So would I." McGee reached for the phone. "We need to update Gibbs. And where's Tony? He should have picked up the camera equipment by now."

Ziva's phone rang instead, and McGee waited to hear the results. Listening to only one half of the conversation was frustrating.

"David."

"Alive?"

"He's not talking?"

"Hospital?" That line really had McGee rising from his seat.

"Understood, Gibbs. I will inform the others." Her glance flicked over her teammate. "I will notify McGee that he is to retrieve the interrogation results from Agent Fornell as soon as they are available. You made clear my offer to interrogate Captain Black?"

Aha. Gibbs and Fornell had taken down Black. McGee was not surprised in the least.

"Yes, Gibbs." Disappointment; it sounded as though the FBI wasn't interested in Ziva's interrogation techniques. Not that McGee could blame them; there was the Geneva Convention to consider, and Black _was_ a U.S. citizen.

Ziva hung up the phone. "The case is over. Gibbs and Agent Fornell apprehended Captain Black, and the captain was injured during the take down. Gibbs says that the man is in surgery and will not be able to talk for several hours."

"So we wait to find out why he tried to kill you and Abby."

"We wait," Ziva confirmed. "Do you want to tell Tony, or shall I?"

McGee shrugged. "I will. If the case is over, I should head out to the warehouse to help him dismantle the equipment." He tapped in the speed dial, and got nothing more than the automated response. McGee snorted. "Probably let the battery die." He sighed. "Want a lift home before I go after Tony?"

Ziva turned him down. "Thank you, no. I drove myself here. Shall I accompany you to the warehouse?" Not her favorite idea, that was clear. Her nervous energy was fading, replaced by an urge to rest. The excitement was past.

She was also on medical leave and shouldn't be here in the first place. "No," McGee told her. "Go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow is another day."

***

He could, DiNozzo decided muzzily, try to puzzle out the pieces or he could simply accept that he was in his own little pit of hell and be done with it.

Drugged. Clearly drugged. Nobody could be thinking this slowly without benefit of drugs, and DiNozzo slowly and painfully tried to remember what had happened.

Oh, yeah. DiNozzo remembered stepping out of his car, remembered hearing the automatic lock beeping twice at him to reassure the NCIS agent that his pride and joy was safe. He remembered thinking about the cameras that McGee had installed at the warehouse, that his assignment was to retrieve those cameras for recycling into the next job.

He remembered getting sprayed in the face with some sort of chemical, something that took him down without so much as a whimper. He groaned; it was something that was giving him the mother of all headaches as he bounced around, tied up, in the trunk of a car.

Trunk of a car? DiNozzo sternly ordered his brain to function. What car? Who was driving it? Where was he being taken? Why?

The hell with it. Every time he tried to put two thoughts together, the car would bump over something and he'd lose it.

Oh, yeah: Teddy Cray. The man's face floated in front of DiNozzo's mind's eye. He was the bastard who had done this. DiNozzo ground his teeth. He'd look forward to punching Cray's lights out for this.

Assuming Cray didn't kill him first.

***

Ducky put his finger to his mouth, silently hushing Gibbs. "Sleeping," he mouthed.

Gibbs nodded. Sleep was good. Sleep helped to heal the body. He gestured for Ducky to join him in the corridor.

Ducky gently disengaged his hand from Abby's, letting the injured woman continue to sleep, and slipped outside the room in order to speak aloud. "You've apprehended him, Jethro?"

"We got him, Ducky." It didn't feel as good to say that as it should have, Gibbs thought. 'Confession' should have been in there. 'Dead body' wouldn't hurt. "He didn't go down easy. He's in surgery."

"Captain Black was the one to hurt our Abby? We're certain?"

Ducky had a way of cutting right to the quick of the matter, and he didn't need a scalpel to do it. Gibbs winced. "That's the working theory, Ducky. We'll test it when Black comes out of anesthesia." Gibbs turned to his real concern. "How's Abby?"

"Better," Ducky told him. "I doubt that she will be going home any time soon, but her condition is distinctly improved."

"Good." Gibbs meant it. "Go get yourself a cup of coffee, okay, doc?"

Ducky understood. "I'll be back in a little while, Jethro."

Gibbs watched the medical examiner walk down the hall and tap the button to summon the elevator before re-entering the hospital room to take the chair by Abby's bed. She did look better, he admitted to himself, sliding his big paw around her slender fingers. The black eyes had faded to purple, going to green around the edges. The Frankenstein stitches across her forehead looked pink and clean. The stitches should be coming out in another week, he thought. Her breathing was even, and so was the march of little green blips on the screen overhead.

He'd been lucky, Gibbs decided. Damn lucky. He could have been looking for a new forensics specialist right now. A new field agent, too, if Ziva hadn't dodged.

Abby stirred. "Gibbs," she murmured, trying to lever open swollen eyelids. "You're here."

He leaned over. "I'm here, Abby," he whispered. "We got him."

"Good," she told him, the words muffled by lips that were too damaged to speak clearly. "Tall skinny guy, right?"

Gibbs nodded. Black wasn't fat, but his shoulders were on the narrow side and sitting in a care he could pass for tall. Gibbs pushed to see it his lab rat could tell him more. "Did you remember something else, Abbs?"

"Gibbs?" She tried to understand what her boss meant.

Gibbs tried again. "Do you remember what the driver looked like, Abby?"

"Well, of course, Gibbs!" The indignation didn't have the same effect when she was flat on her back and narcotized to her ears. "Tall torso—couldn't tell what the legs were like with him sitting in the driver's seat—with light brown hair cut short. No glasses. Caucasian. Short straight nose. Thin lips."

Uh-oh. Black's hair was dark brown, not light, and Gibbs could say for certain that the imposter did not have thin lips. In fact, one of those lips could best be described as 'fat' now that Gibbs had landed a knuckle-buster. He prayed, and asked, "Eyes?"

"Two." Abby suddenly giggled.

Juiced, Gibbs decided. Thoroughly, completely juiced on morphine or whatever high end pain-killer hospitals were handing out these days. "What color, Abby?"

"Rainbow," she sighed.

"Abby?"

She looked at him, square on, suddenly lucid. "Not a clue, Gibbs. Not close enough. Could see his features, but not the color of his eyes. Thin lips, and a short nose. That's all I could see through the windshield."

It fit. Gibbs didn't like it, but it fit. Black was as dirty as they came, but he wasn't the one who tried to kill Abby. Black wasn't stupid, which meant that he knew taking a crack at a Federal employee like Abby Sciutto would make her team never stop until the perpetrator was identified and thoroughly sorry for having done such a heinous act. Which meant that the little sneaking suspicion in Gibbs's gut telling him that Black was innocent of that part of the case was right. Which meant that there was still someone out there trying to kill his lab rat and Ziva.

What the hell was going on?

***

The parking lot looked deserted when McGee pulled in. He spotted DiNozzo's flashy red convertible easily, parked beneath the street lamp which, by the way, wasn't working. McGee stifled a snigger; trust Tony to find the one non-functional light. It had still been daylight when the agent had arrived, McGee determined, so DiNozzo clearly hadn't realized the problem.

On the other hand, what was taking DiNozzo so long? It shouldn't have taken him more than an hour or so to find and retrieve the half dozen cameras that McGee and Ziva had put up. It was now past two hours since the man had gone out. Had something gone wrong? Had DiNozzo fallen, the old 'help me, I've fallen and can't get up' routine?

It couldn't be Black. Gibbs had apprehended him. Well, to be honest, Fornell had apprehended him and the FBI was fighting with NCIS over jurisdiction. At the moment, the FBI was winning, McGee had heard, mostly because their guys out-numbered the NCIS guys at the scene of the apprehension. The FBI wanted Black bad, to make up for their poor judgment in putting him there in the first place.

It would be war, of that McGee was certain. Gibbs himself wanted Black to pay for trying to kill Abby. McGee didn't blame his boss one bit; he felt the same way. Abby was the lab rat, not supposed to be in the line of fire. McGee would be at her bedside right now, standing guard over her, if there hadn't been a better way to remove the threat. Removing the threat meant apprehending Black. Mission accomplished.

It was now a matter of cleaning up the loose ends and picking up after themselves, which meant retrieving the cameras, which meant where the hell was DiNozzo? Had the man gotten side-tracked, left the cameras for the butt of all of DiNozzo's bad jokes to pick up? McGee had to admit, it would be in DiNozzo's nature to do something like that.

But…there was Tony's car. DiNozzo would squeeze a joke until it screamed for mercy, but he wouldn't abandon his car. Not unless something—or someone—made him. DiNozzo's failure to answer his cell phone took on a new and unpleasant connotation.

McGee considered. It could still be a DiNozzo style joke. By rights, McGee should call for back up, and DiNozzo would laugh uproariously when they all arrived. "Scared, little Probie?" he would sneer. "Afraid of the dark?"

McGee was tired of protesting his innocence, tired of being laughed at for following protocols. This had all the earmarks of a DiNozzo joke and yet—it didn't.

McGee pulled out his weapon, the weight of it heavy in his hand. _Serve you right if I shoot you by accident, Tony,_ he thought grimly to himself.

First, check out the car. Now McGee regretted that DiNozzo's car was bathed in darkness. Holding his weapon in one hand and a flashlight in the other, he cautiously approached the car that he'd ridden in more times than he could count.

No DiNozzo. The car was locked, the little guard light winking redly against the steering column. Nothing unusual there, nothing to suggest that the owner had done anything more than lock up and go about his business.

That meant that DiNozzo had gone into the warehouse. That meant that DiNozzo was waiting for him in the warehouse, waiting to laugh at him. That meant that DiNozzo was _going_ to laugh at him, let the damn cameras record the whole joke, and then order McGee to pick up his own damn cameras. Yeah, that was Tony, all right. It fit.

The warehouse door was unlocked, not that McGee expected anything different. The place was still a crime scene, surrounded by yellow crime scene tape, and there would be a guard guarding the place. Maybe the guard and DiNozzo were playing cards together, waiting to play their little joke on the geek. Hah, hah. McGee could take a joke. Case is over, so let's have some fun at McGee's expense. McGee pushed open the door with the barrel of his gun.

Empty. Quiet. Silent, even. DiNozzo had seen McGee coming, had doused the lights. "Tony?" he called into the darkness.

Nothing, just the rustling of something in the distance, probably rats. _I hate rats_. "Tony?" he called again. "Tony, this isn't funny."

More rustling, this time more frantic.

_Rats don't get frantic. They slip away from you, or sometimes they rush at you with teeth bared._ McGee felt for the light switch, flicked on the overhead lights high above him.

The scene sprang into light, as it should have been. The lights should have been on all the time.

There, in front of him, lying on the floor, was the bound and gagged figure of Seaman Forrest.

Not a joke.

***

Even worse, Gibbs had to reign in his temper.

Of the people around, only McGee was on Gibbs's team. Only McGee knew that Gibbs's bite was worse than his bark, and that his bite was to be avoided at all costs.

There were NCIS and FBI agents swarming all over the place. Fornell was there as well, barking out orders as fast as Gibbs. Faster, actually, McGee decided, because only McGee was in Gibbs's line of fire. Fornell had the whole cadre of FBI agents to bark at. Fornell didn't care that Gibbs's bite was worse than his bark, because Special Agent Fornell would bite back.

McGee had told his story only about five or six times, and he figured that he had another seven to go: he had driven out here to help Special Agent DiNozzo. No, Agent DiNozzo did not know that Special Agent McGee was coming. No, Agent DiNozzo did not answer his cell phone and was continuing not to answer his cell phone. No, Agent McGee had no idea who was behind this or who was behind the attempted murders of both Forensic Specialist Sciutto and Officer David. Until a few minutes ago, Agent McGee believed that the recently apprehended Captain Black, who had been stealing navy supplies and weaponry while pretending to work for the FBI, was responsible for the attacks.

Seaman Forrest was no help. Every agent there could diagnose concussion at twenty paces, and Forrest could barely remember his own name, let along what had happened. The only hard evidence available was a scalp wound to the back of the man's head, one that was already clotting over. Gibbs knew that meant that the attack had been at least ten minutes ago and probably more. He had a time window of two hours, and that was a hell of a long time for DiNozzo to be missing. He watched grimly as the ambulance carted Seaman Forrest off to D.C. General, the noise screaming into the distance.

Gibbs straightened from looking at the ground beside DiNozzo's car. "DiNozzo met someone here," he told them. "There was no scuffle, but someone was dragged away. I'm betting that it was DiNozzo. The suspect was tall, roughly five ten, and skinny. Had some muscle on him, despite being a lightweight."

One of the FBI agents looked doubtful. "You can tell all of that? You a forensics specialist?"

Fornell didn't bother looking at his agent. "Shut up, Jerry. Gibbs knows what he's talking about." He turned to Gibbs. "That ring any bells for you, Gibbs? McGee?"

"Agent Fornell!" one of the FBI agents interrupted. "I found a credit card over here! Somebody by the name of Bartholomew Roy."

Gibbs growled. "Seaman Roy. Another one of the guards stationed at this warehouse. He's six foot and skinny."

"We got an address on him?" Fornell wanted to know. "He may have been an accomplice of Black."

"Right here." McGee named it from memory.

"Not too far from here," Fornell said. "Gibbs, want a lift?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Jerry, you'll cover the back of Roy's place. Take Mutt and Jeff there with you. Call in when you're in place. No sirens; if this is our guy, we don't want him icing DiNozzo as soon as he hears us coming. Let's move, people."


	11. Road to Nowhere

The bed was far more comfortable than the trunk of the car. There was no bouncing over ruts, no getting tossed from side to side, collecting bruises.

DiNozzo blinked, realizing that he was awake once more. Whatever the hell it was, it was wearing off. Left him with a hangover worthy of his frat days, but he was awake—sort of.

He was also tied up. His wrists were securely bound behind him—DiNozzo tried to see how much play there was in the ropes, and there was none—and whoever had dumped him here had put a half hitch around his ankles as well. DiNozzo was going nowhere fast.

It was dark out. Must be night—no, it was a damn blindfold. DiNozzo could see a slender slit of light from around the edges. It still could be night, because the light had the look of interior lamps rather than fresh sunlight. That gave him more information, that it had likely been only an hour or two that he'd been away from reality. When this whole kidnap-the-agent thing went down, it had been early evening.

What the hell was going on? Why was whoever doing this?

"You're awake. I'm glad."

DiNozzo froze. He licked his lips, feeling the dryness crack underneath his tongue. "Whatever your name is, you are in big trouble. I'm a federal agent."

"I know that, Tony," the voice reproved, as if DiNozzo should have been aware that the voice knew everything. DiNozzo felt a hand slide over the shirt he wore. DiNozzo felt hot breath coming close to his ear. The voice whispered, "you're so damn sexy when you say that."

_Crap_. DiNozzo knew who it was, remembered seeing the man's face just before passing out.

Teddy Cray, former lover of John Lapini, roommate of the recently deceased Seaman Michael McDonough. No wonder Lapini dumped him; the man was seriously looney-toons.

Hands fumbled at the buttons to DiNozzo's shirt, struggling with the first but gaining speed as the opening widened. "Magnificent," Teddy murmured, sliding his fingers across the muscles that he found there.

"Let me go," DiNozzo ordered. "This is a federal offense." _After all the jokes I've played on Ziva and McGee, they'll never let me forget this one. At least he hasn't ripped the hand-tailored shirt. This thing is expensive._

"Soon," Teddy crooned. "You know you want this."

DiNozzo went cold. This idiot couldn't be serious? He cleared his throat. "Mr. Cray, I think there's been a big mistake. I don't know what you think I meant, but I am an NCIS agent investigating a murder. Untie me, and we'll sort this out."

Teddy's hand continued to explore the skin that he found underneath the cloth, playing and tugging at DiNozzo's belt.

"I know exactly what you meant, Agent Tony," Teddy whispered, using his teeth to nip at DiNozzo's neck. DiNozzo yelped in surprise. It didn't hurt, but it was not something that DiNozzo had ever expected to feel from another man. "All those others, they weren't right for you."

That didn't sound right. "What others?" DiNozzo asked cautiously.

Then it hit him. "You!" he swore. "You were the one who tried to kill Abby and Ziva!"

"Is that what their names were? They were no good for you. You realize that now." It was a statement, not a question. Teddy Cray was beyond hearing anything that he didn't want to hear. "You're much happier with me."

Stark, raving looney-toons. Certifiable. Straight-jacket eligible. Anthony DiNozzo could come up with a half dozen more descriptive phrases, but the bottom line was that he was in the hands of a crazy man who had tried to kill Abby and Ziva because he saw them as romantic rivals.

It all fit. Abby had given him a hug when he'd dropped her off to pick up her car. Ziva had been with them, but this crazy man had only had eyes for DiNozzo and the lab rat hugging him.

Exit one lab rat.

Ziva had been with him when they'd questioned Jennifer Rose, at the strip club. There hadn't been anything like a hug or anything else that a reasonable person would have interpreted as a personal relationship, but Teddy Cray wasn't reasonable.

Exit one pissed off Mossad agent.

Who would have been next? McGee? Gibbs? Maybe Gretchen, that DiNozzo had a date with this weekend? Yeah, Gretchen would have been in this guy's line of fire for sure. If Teddy thought that Abby's friendship hug was threatening, he would be going ballistic over the antics that DiNozzo had intended for Gretchen.

_Okay, we've established that this guy is whacked. We've also established that I am in deep doo-doo. Question is: how do I get out of this?_

DiNozzo cleared his throat. "You can untie me, Teddy."

Teddy giggled. The sound was nauseating. "Don't be silly, Tony. This is all part of the fun."

DiNozzo suddenly felt a cloth pressed over his nose and mouth, something with a sickeningly sweet odor. He thrashed about, trying to free himself, trying to inhale air not tainted with the chemical.

"Just breathe deep, my love," Teddy crooned.

It was the last thing that DiNozzo heard as his head swam off into darkness, doing the butterfly stroke right along with Teddy Cray's wits.

***

Gibbs positioned himself on one side of the door, McGee on the other. Fornell and three others hung back, weapons ready, with another half dozen men covering the back entrance. Fornell nodded to Gibbs: on your mark.

Gibbs pounded on the door, keeping himself out of the line of fire. "NCIS! Open up!"

Silence.

"NCIS! Open up, or we're coming in!"

"Hold on! Hold on! Let me throw some clothes on!"

It sounded like Seaman Roy, and it sounded like someone scrambling to put things together. A toilet flushed.

"Break it down," Gibbs ordered.

It was what one of Fornell's men had been waiting for, the one with the nickname of 'Battering Ram'. He proved that the nickname had been earned. The door collapsed without a second thought.

"Go! Go! Go!" Fornell yelled. "Jerry, cover the back!"

Chaos. There was another crash as the agents at the back of the small home broke down the back door. A dozen men, all waving guns, stormed in.

Roy emerged from the bathroom in his skivvies, terrified, raising his hands into the air. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" he begged. "Take whatever you want, just don't shoot!"

"Where is he?" Gibbs snarled.

"Clear!" Fornell yelled from the kitchen.

"Hit the bedroom!" another agent called, heading for the closed door.

"Don't—" Roy started to say.

The agent kicked open the bedroom door. A scream came out at him.

Gibbs caught sight of a female, completely unclothed and moderately attractive.

That didn't stop Fornell's agents. Three barreled in, waving guns, ignoring the additional screams. "All clear!"

"Where's DiNozzo?" Gibbs turned to Seaman Roy.

"Who?"

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs didn't need to yell. Dropping his voice to almost nonexistent was far more effective.

"The NCIS guy." Roy tried to make his brains work faster than usual. "I haven't seen him, sir. Not since he questioned me down at your place. Your headquarters, sir. I've been here all evening, sir. You can ask _my girl_."

"Your girl?"

"_My girl_." There was desperation on Seaman Roy's face, the kind that begged _please don't tell the girl in my bed about jumping the Rose of Glory's bones in the warehouse_. The kind of desperation that said this young sailor was telling the absolute truth about where he'd been this evening, and that it wasn't with NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.

Where the hell was DiNozzo?

***

Chloroform? Maybe, but DiNozzo didn't think so. Whatever Teddy Cray had smothered him with, it hadn't quite had that smell.

Didn't matter. It had had a similar effect, and none of it good. His head was killing him, and any movement at all had the potential to give his last supper a repeat performance.

DiNozzo listened, knowing that it was the one thing he could do without moving. Everything sounded quiet; if Teddy was still in residence, then he was sleeping. Good; that gave DiNozzo some time to work with.

Step one: the blindfold. DiNozzo rubbed his head along the pillow until it slipped off. It hadn't been put on very securely, and DiNozzo counted it as a point in his favor. Not that getting it off helped all that much: it was dark out. The clock on the nightstand told him that it was almost two in the morning.

Next step: get himself untied. DiNozzo concentrated on breathing through his nose, begging his stomach not to erupt as he slid his feet through the circle that his tied wrists provided. It was tough, but it brought his hands to where he could almost see them in the dark.

The window allowed slender shafts of moonlight to enter through the blinds, and DiNozzo used them to investigate the ropes that hobbled his ankles. It took far too much time, but DiNozzo was able to loosen the ties and slide them off along with his shoes. The ropes wouldn't pass over the shoes, but they would over sock-clad feet. The shoes came off.

He then had a choice: look for something to cut through the ropes around his wrists, or flee from this place right now. DiNozzo was plenty pissed with the treatment he'd received, not to mention that of a certain colleague and a certain forensics scientist of his acquaintance. Taking Cray into custody would help to relieve that anger. He'd look for a knife to cut through the ropes; there was probably a kitchen, and where there was a kitchen there was likely to be knives. He rose, and took his first step.

The carpet jumped up and whacked him in the nose.

Not really, was DiNozzo's next chagrinned thought. The carpet didn't really bushwhack him. He'd just done a face plant, courtesy of the leftover chemicals still pounding at his brain. Walking was going to be a challenge for the next little while, especially if DiNozzo expected to do it without tossing his cookies every third step.

_Okay, re-think step number three_. _Let's not try to take down the skinny guy with his own set of iron muscles. Let's try the escape route, call Gibbs, and watch Gibbs do all the things to Teddy Cray that I'd like to do myself_. Yeah, that would be a better option than getting himself caught again.

Easy: cell phone.

Oops. Not so easy. The cell phone was missing from his pocket, and DiNozzo nearly cursed out loud. That cell phone was his equivalent of a little black book. Didn't Cray have any respect for a man's little black book?

Since the dude had tied up one Anthony DiNozzo with the intent of performing lewd and lascivious acts upon him, DiNozzo was willing to decide that the answer was a bright and shining 'no'.

That left walking as the next best option, walking down the road and searching for a working phone. Hell, it was the _only_ option. DiNozzo staggered his way to the front door, his vision wavering in the gloom. It was only when he was six feet outside of the front door when he realized he'd left his shoes behind.

_It's damn cold out. I'd better go back for them—_

The light clicked on in the house.

Cray was awake.

Going back for his shoes suddenly seemed like a really poor idea.

DiNozzo ran.

And fell down.

He picked himself up, and ran again.

***

"Can't you find him, McGee?" Gibbs was on his feet, pacing. "Do that thing that you do with the cell phones! Find him!"

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't. Not unless he's using the phone." McGee was pounding away at his keyboard, frantically looking for a clue, anything to point them in the direction that DiNozzo might be. "Sir, the crates that Black was stealing were being diverted to Kuwait—"

"Are you telling me that DiNozzo is en route to Kuwait, McGee?"

McGee wilted. "No, sir."

"Then find him!" Gibbs roared. "Who else is tall and skinny, and connected to this case…" He trailed off. His eyes met McGee's, then dropped to the waste basket that still held a thorny stem. The rose petals had already dropped to the bottom of the basket. "Tall and skinny?"

"Yes, boss!"

"Address?"

McGee didn't have to look at his screen. "Townhouse on Fifteenth and Walnut, boss."

"Right around the corner from Ziva." Gibbs recognized the address. "Call her. Tell her to monitor, but do not move in."

***

_Crap_, it was _cold!_ DiNozzo fought to keep from shivering, fought to keep from falling over onto the frozen ground. How long did it take for frostbite to set into unprotected feet? He just might find out. Socks didn't count as protection, not in late fall pretending to be winter.

Then he was on his knees again. What was this, the third time in ten minutes? His stomach was already empty. His head was pounding, his mouth felt like the four oh fifteenth had marched through, and if his vision didn't stop having those wavy lines he was just going to close them and be done with the matter.

He pulled himself to his feet, cursing the ropes that still circled his wrists, worrying that the circulation was getting cut off. _Frostbite hits the fingers, too, and lack of circulation won't help…_

***

"There is no one home, Gibbs." Ziva no longer sported the sling for her arm. It got in her way, and details such as 'pain' were irrelevant. She slipped into the back seat of Gibbs's car, out of the cold night air.

"You're certain?" The townhouse, to Gibbs and McGee, looked like every other townhouse on the block. Some had a light on in a solitary bedroom, others not, but all except for one appeared to have residents tucked in for the night. The one townhouse that appeared abandoned had a 'for sale' sign out front. It did not belong to Theodore Cray.

"I'm certain." Ziva stared Gibbs down, daring him to object to her unauthorized and specifically prohibited excursion into the townhouse in question.

Gibbs glared back. _We'll talk later, David_. "Where else would he take him? And why?"

McGee looked up. "I don't know why, boss—"

"Where?" Gibbs demanded.

"Cray has a place out in the country, not too far from—"

Gibbs's car was already in motion.

***

Cold, but not even any snow to melt in his mouth. DiNozzo felt awful, staggering from tree to tree. Dead leaves rustled under his sock-covered feet.

He blinked. He'd made it to the tree line surrounding Cray's place. He wasn't certain of how he'd done it and even less certain of how he'd managed to avoid getting caught again, but gratitude for such things could be postponed until he was warm again.

He couldn't feel his feet. That was okay, because he couldn't feel his hands either. Equal opportunity frostbite. He giggled, well-aware that his brains were leaking out of his ears. The moon overhead was three-quarters full, enough to light his way but not enough to compensate for the wavering blackness that threatened to throw him back onto the cold ground again.

Where was he going? DiNozzo couldn't remember. Oh, yeah: away from here. Not making very swift progress. Did that matter? He seemed to think that it did.

_Crack!_

A bullet whistled by his head, burying itself in the tree trunk that he was holding onto to keep himself upright.

It was amazing how adrenalin could clear one's mind. His circumstances shot back into his brain, and DiNozzo stumbled away as fast as he could.

"She can't have you, Tony!" Teddy shrieked. _Blam!_ Another bullet arrowed through the woods, this one ricocheting off over his head. It wasn't clear which 'she' Teddy Cray was referring to. Under the circumstances, DiNozzo was willing to put off the answer to that question. "She can't have you!"

***

Cray's place in the country wasn't overly large, but for one person it didn't need to be. It was well-kept, a two bedroom place on one story, with dark curtains covering over the front picture window. Gibbs couldn't see what color the curtains were, not in the darkness of night. There was a separate garage with a dark sedan parked in front of it. Gibbs spared the time to look at the license plate: it contained a B and a D.

It was the car that had run Abby down, and Gibbs was willing to bet that this car was involved in removing Special Agent DiNozzo from the crime scene.

This was it. There was a light in the house which, at something close to two AM, there shouldn't be. Everyone ought to be asleep at this time.

Gibbs listened, knowing that the other two were listening just as hard. There were no noises coming from the house, nothing from inside, and when he turned his attention to the free-standing garage he could detect nothing coming from inside that building either.

He wasn't about to dawdle. Using hand signals, he gestured for Ziva to cover the back of the house. The Mossad agent slipped away into the darkness, intent on her target zone.

More hand signals, this time to McGee: _you and me, we'll hit the front door. On three. One. Two._

He never hit three.

A single report echoed across the countryside: _gunfire!_

Not one of the three NCIS agents needed a second invitation. All three burst into a flat out run toward the sound.


	12. Final Destination

Closer. The damn loon was getting closer.

DiNozzo had watched a lot of escape movies, and not one of them seemed to apply to his situation. There wasn't any convenient space-going shuttlecraft to crawl into, no handy canoes on equally as convenient riverbanks. If this were a fantasy, he'd be able to hide himself in a thicket of enchanted thorn bushes. If it were a B western, good ole Clint himself would be circling up the wagons. James Bond would duck into a bar and emerge with a drop dead gorgeous model/counter-spy on his arm.

Not DiNozzo. He was staggering through the woods in sock-covered feet, hands tied, trying to keep from getting shot by a crazy man.

He could just give up. He could flop onto the ground and let Cray walk over and put a bullet between his eyes. That would save a lot of effort. Wouldn't change the ending. Cray would catch him in the end. There was no doubt about that.

Not the Gibbs-approved method of leaving this world. Gibbs didn't have to be physically present for one Tony DiNozzo to feel the whack of Gibbs's hand upside his head.

"_DiNozzo!" roared the omni-present Gibbs in his mind. "Get your ass in gear and get moving!"_

"Yes, boss," DiNozzo mumbled. He hauled himself to his feet once more, using both hands on a slender tree trunk for support.

"_You think I want to be put to the trouble of finding a replacement for you?"_

"No, boss." Three staggering steps.

Those steps brought him face to face with Teddy Cray.

Cray had a rifle in his hands, something long and cylindrical. DiNozzo had no doubt that a closer look would identify the exact make and model, but putting that off for another day would have to do. Could angels look down on Earth and figure out those sorts of things? That was assuming that Anthony DiNozzo was going to end up in heaven. He swayed, trying to keep his feet underneath him.

_The life you've led? Big assumption, DiNozzo_.

They were twenty yards apart, staring at each other across a large clearing. Trees surrounded them on all sides, and the moon chose this moment to illuminate the scene without any clouds to dim the lighting. A large boulder poked its way up out of the ground to one side, too far away for DiNozzo to have any chance of reaching it before Cray could plug him, even if DiNozzo had all his wits about him.

Cray stood there, watching DiNozzo watch him, a look of misery on his face. "You don't love me, Tony."

_Never did, fruitcake_.

Cray lifted the rifle.

A slender caress of the trigger.

A sharp _crack_ echoed into the night.

***

He ran flat out, circling around as per Gibbs's urgent gestures. Gibbs was going straight in, Ziva to the south and McGee to the north. Running had never been McGee's strength; he had just barely passed the physical to be a field agent and his greatest nightmare was that someone would come across his personnel jacket and decide that Timothy McGee needed to re-qualify on the track.

Not a concern tonight. Fear for his fellow agent gave him far greater speed than he knew he possessed.

There they were: two shadows in the moonlight. He couldn't tell which was which, not through the trees. Shooting was not an option, not if he couldn't tell which one to shoot, and if he stopped to take aim he'd get there too late.

_Make a decision, McGee. Which one gets taken down? What do you do so that when Abby comes home from the hospital the first place that she goes isn't to Tony DiNozzo's funeral?_

McGee ran.

***

Failure was not an option. Ziva sped through the trees, using her smaller size to her advantage to slide through openings that her larger cohorts couldn't manage. A branch whipped across her arm, and she staggered before righting herself. It had smacked her across the bicep, where the bullet from the killer had struck, and she lost precious seconds. She could hear Gibbs crashing through to her north, although she'd lost track of McGee further out.

She saw them, both of them. She saw DiNozzo, swaying, barely able to keep his feet, staring at his kidnapper across a large clearing in the woods. Drugged, that was clear; there was no other way that a single man could overcome her partner. There were many things that she could say about Anthony DiNozzo starting with immature and passing through self-centered and well into foolish, but incompetent was not one of them.

No matter. She needed to get there before that son of a dog shot DiNozzo. She _would_ get there first!

***

Leroy Jethro Gibbs had lost men before. He had lost comrades in arms, in this skirmish and that. He had lost members of his team—Kate, with a red hole in her forehead. She never knew that she had died—and he had lost loved ones. There had been entirely too much death in Gibbs's history.

He'd be damned if he let it be one more!

Cray was there, in the clearing, taking a bead on DiNozzo. The bastard had a rifle in his hands—Gibbs couldn't make out the model through the moonlit night, and it didn't matter. What did matter was that the thing could spit bullets. Cray stood tall, skinny against the trees, easy to miss. Fat man: like hitting the broad side of a barn. Taking aim at Cray was akin to going for the barn door that was open with just a slender side sliver to shoot at.

DiNozzo stood there, silver-coated in moonshine, swaying as though the barely noticeable breeze was pushing him over. If this was one of DiNozzo's damn movies, he'd be able to dodge the bullet in Cray's rifle that had his name on it. Another movie, and DiNozzo would come through surgery with Abby nursing him back to health, happily ever after.

Neither of those scenarios was likely to happen. DiNozzo stood there like a drunkard, unable to move, and Abby herself was lying in a hospital bed with the medical examiner, a man better known for autopsies than helping keep people alive, holding her hand.

Gibbs saw Cray raise the rifle. He saw Cray's lips move.

No more time. Not another second for forward progress. Gibbs's body knew the drill even before his brain ordered it: Halt. Aim. Fire.

Was he fast enough?

***

This was it. Tony DiNozzo knew it as clearly as his name, and there wasn't a chance in hell that he could stop what was about to happen. 'Deer in the headlights', he thought. Paralyzed by fear.

It wasn't fear, but it might as well be. Every muscle in his body told him that enough was enough, that they were tired of all the crap drugs he'd inhaled and that a nice long siesta was required. Didn't matter that all the crap had been administered by the crazy dude standing in front of him with a loaded gun.

_That siesta might be longer than you think, muscles._

_You think we care?_

Cray spoke. "You don't love me, Tony."

DiNozzo ordered his mouth to say something witty. It would intolerable if he left this life without some sort of sarcastic remark. Nothing came out.

Cray lifted his rifle to his shoulder, taking careful aim. _The heart_, DiNozzo thought wildly. _How trite. The heart_.

Cray's finger caressed the trigger. It was the same finger that had caressed DiNozzo's chest just an hour ago. A gentle pressure, just enough to fire the bullet that would end DiNozzo's life.

The _crack_ was louder than any bullet DiNozzo had ever heard, the sound blasting through his skull. Something smashed into him, bowling him over and helping him to crash to the ground. The _crack_ was followed by more.

Huh?

Jilted lovers didn't usually go for the double tap execution.

Cray staggered with the last two reports, someone _else's_ bullets smacking into him with all the fury that he'd tried to unleash on DiNozzo. Blood sprang to his lips, and the heavy rifle slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. With a groan, DiNozzo's assailant dropped to his knees and from there to the forest floor.

DiNozzo himself was on the ground. He blinked; he'd expected to feel more pain. He felt nothing.

No, not quite accurate. He felt a heavy weight on top of him. It was, he realized, a heavy weight that had knocked him out of the path of Cray's bullet.

A heavy weight that wasn't moving: McGee.

***

"Don't move!" Gibbs roared, his gun between two hands, aimed at Cray's head. "Don't move!"

Cray's hand inched toward the fallen rifle. One NCIS bullet had gone through his shoulder and the other into his gut. Blood was spilling out, and still he was reaching for his gun.

"Don't move!" Gibbs snarled, moving in. _Go for it. Go for it. Give me an excuse_.

Ziva darted in, kicking the rifle out of reach.

Gibbs growled wordlessly, deprived of legitimate prey. "Stay with him," he ordered harshly. He raised his voice. "McGee? DiNozzo?"

DiNozzo tried to respond. He really did; Gibbs could hear the effort in his agent's voice. "Boss?"

Had Cray's bullet found its mark?

"McGee?"

No answer.

"Stay with him," Gibbs repeated to Ziva, holstering his weapon and pulling out his cell. He dialed a very familiar number en route to the pile of bodies.

Rapid sit-rep. McGee: breathing. Gibbs rolled him off of the body underneath. McGee came alive at that, grabbing for his leg and hissing. Body number two: DiNozzo, also breathing, staring at Gibbs as though he were a ghost. DiNozzo worked his lips and, for a change, nothing came out.

Shivering, though; going into shock. Pupils wider than the Grand Canyon. Just as Gibbs had thought: drugged. Nothing less would shut up DiNozzo. Gibbs shrugged out of his jacket, slinging it around DiNozzo's shoulders.

Crap; how long would it take help to get here? Able-bodied persons were in short supply at the moment, and it wasn't as if this place was on the main drag. Hell, there wasn't even a road where they were.

"Need a hand, Gibbs?"

The voice came out of the blue, and it belonged to Special Agent Fornell, and it sounded a hell of a lot better than Leroy Jethro Gibbs would ever admit. Not only that, but Fornell had arrived with a couple of his big brawny types to help.

"Took you enough time, Fornell," he responded, as if he'd been expecting the FBI agent to show up. He raised his voice. "Ziva?"

"Not good, Gibbs. He's losing a lot of blood."

_So what's not good about that? The man harmed four of my people_. None of that showed in Gibbs's words. "Fornell, have your people get Cray back to the house where it's warm, and you give Ziva a hand with DiNozzo."

"Gladly."

Gibbs turned back to McGee, still clutching at his leg. Blood oozed out from between his fingers, looking dark in the inadequate moonlight. "You gonna be able to walk, McGee?"

"Yes, boss," McGee gasped, not that he could admit to anything else. Not to Gibbs.

"Good. Let's get you and DiNozzo inside." Gibbs slid his hand under McGee's arm, hoisting the man to his feet. McGee balanced on one foot, trying not to go back down. Gibbs hauled McGee's arm over his shoulder, supporting most of his weight, and started the far too long trek to the small house in the distance. Fornell's men had already picked up the suspect and were carrying the unconscious body between them, dripping blood to mark their path.

DiNozzo's turn. Ziva took a moment to turn his wide eyes to hers. "Tony," she said urgently, "look at me."

DiNozzo blinked, trying to marshal muzzy thoughts.

"Time to go home," she told him.

***

The medics at the scene made the determination to chopper Cray to the nearest trauma unit; one confided to Fornell that he thought that one of the bullets might be close to a major vessel, with the very real possibility of the suspect hemorrhaging to death en route to any facility farther out. Fornell's men went with them, to guard the suspect. Gibbs felt grim relief; it wouldn't take much to 'help' the man out of his troubles, and Gibbs didn't want to expose himself to the temptation. He wouldn't do it—but it would be hard.

Next: McGee.

"I'm okay," McGee protested, resisting the medics' efforts to conduct him to a stretcher. "It's just a scratch."

Time to take a hand. Gibbs turned a steely eye on the cyber-geek. "McGee, you almost passed out three times walking back here. I'm not toting you any farther. Get your ass on the stretcher."

McGee deflated. "Yes, boss."

Gibbs leaned over. "Besides, you're a damn hero. If you hadn't pushed him out of the way, that bullet in your leg would have gone through DiNozzo's heart and I'd be promoting you into his spot."

"Oh." From the expression on his face, McGee didn't know what to make of that.

Next: DiNozzo. There was a little color coming back in to the senior NCIS agent's face, but not much, and he was still shivering despite the blankets that Ziva had found to wrap around him. Fornell himself had taken a few shots of the crime scene: DiNozzo's shirt that he found on the upstairs bedroom floor in tatters, and the ropes that had been around his ankles. Fornell mouthed silently to Gibbs, "what the hell happened here, Gibbs?"

Gibbs shook his head warningly at Fornell. A discussion of what could have happened had they not gotten here as quickly as they did was not something that DiNozzo needed to hear. His eyes were closed, and only the shaking told Gibbs that McGee would have to wait for his promotion. Gibbs helped the medics to lift DiNozzo onto his own stretcher, taking the man under the shoulders and feeling the shivers refused to quit.

"Blankets," he told the medics, even though they had already dumped three on top of DiNozzo. "Keep him warm."

***

"So, there I was, running out into the cold, this crazy guy after me—hey, boss," DiNozzo broke off at Gibbs's entrance into the hospital room. "Abby!"

Gibbs's team was a sorry looking lot: DiNozzo himself had pinked up, but the bandages around his hands and feet belied his apparent good health. There were lines in the man's face that didn't belong, and a weariness that said jumping out of the sterile white linens on the uncomfortable hospital bed wasn't going to happen for the next several days.

McGee looked little better, relaxing in the window bed. Dangling plastic tubes told a story of intravenous antibiotics dripped in over time. The rest of the damage was mercifully covered by bandages and blankets.

Gibbs had brought in the rest of his broken bunch: Ziva, with her arm back in its sling where it belonged, and Abby—having escaped the clutches of the nursing staff on the floor above—was enjoying a lovely ensemble of two hospital gowns (one front and one back) with a utilitarian yet completely unlovely matching blanket across her legs as she stayed seated in her wheelchair. She tried to get up.

"Ah, ah, my dear." Dr. Mallard put his hand upon the forensic scientist's shoulder in gentle protest. "Remember what we promised the nurses: they have allowed you to accompany us to visit Anthony and Timothy, provided that you remain in this wheelchair throughout the jaunt."

"Ducky…!" she tried to wail.

"You wouldn't want me to go back on my word, would you, Abigail?"

"Well…" The end was a foregone conclusion. Abby wasn't about to disappoint the medical examiner.

Ducky turned to the two men. "I had a word with your respective physicians, gentlemen. They assure me that the three of you can expect to be discharged by tomorrow."

"After which," Gibbs added, "you'll all be on medical leave for a week." He crossed his arms, a satisfied smile on his face, daring them to ask for the whole story.

McGee ventured the question. "Boss?"

"I heard from Fornell," Gibbs told the group. "Captain Black had a very interesting story behind him. It seems the good captain wasn't the good captain."

"There's a tale to be told," Ducky observed.

"There is, indeed, Ducky." Gibbs continued the recitation. "Captain Black, upon returning from his overseas tour some six months ago, was scheduled to take command of Warehouse 352."

"Which he did," Ziva put in.

"Not exactly, Officer David." Gibbs was enjoying himself. "It seems the man that we know as Captain Black is _not_ Captain Black. Our captain waylaid the real Captain Black somewhere between Germany and here, and took his place. Switched all the identification he could find. For all intents, he _became_ Captain Black."

McGee could add one plus one to come up with a nefarious scheme. "So the fake Captain Black took the real Captain Black's place in order to perpetrate the warehouse scheme that we uncovered."

"Right, McGee. It was all a set up. In fact, if you hadn't noticed the discrepancies with the inventory, the fake Captain Black would have continued to steal weapons from the Navy. 'Black' hired Jennifer Rose, aka 'the Rose of Glory' to 'entertain' the guard in the evening so that Black could make the barcode switches. Seaman McDonough apparently heard something during his post-coital leisure, discovered Black in the act, whereupon Black killed him. Black could bluff that through, but he got nervous when we questioned Jennifer Rose. He didn't think she would withstand the interrogation no matter how much he paid her, so she became his next victim."

"So he thought he was safe at that point," DiNozzo realized.

"Exactly. Then somebody took aim at Abby." Gibbs tightened his hand on her shoulder. It had been so close! Gibbs refused to contemplate what his career—no, what his _life_—would have been like without her. "It wasn't Black, but it was enough to keep us all searching for the answer. Black panicked, and tried to skedaddle."

"So who was he?" McGee asked. "I mean, who was he really?"

Gibbs tightened his lips. "Does the name 'Konietska' ring any bells?"

Ziva sucked in a breath. "The arms dealer?"

"One and the same, Officer David. Homeland Security, in the person of Special Agent Fornell, was something less than pleased to learn that the FBI had been sponsoring 'Captain Black'." Gibbs grinned wryly. "They thought that they'd stumbled onto the plot that would destroy Konietska's network. They thought that they had discovered the inroad that would lead to unraveling the scheme. Little did they know that they were supporting Konietska's efforts. Gonna be a few red faces in Washington for a while," Gibbs added with satisfaction, "at least, until the trial."

"It was Cray who tried to run Abby down," DiNozzo prodded. "Did he give any kind of statement? Any reason why he picked on me, and not McGeek over there?"

Gibbs's face hardened. "We're never going to know for certain, DiNozzo. Theodore Cray died early this morning of his wounds. He never woke up, never gave a deathbed statement."

"Discussions with Seaman Lapini, conducted with the greatest confidentiality, suggests that Mr. Cray was not a stable individual," Ducky put in. "He had a fixation on men in uniform, in positions of authority as he perceived them. His mental health was deteriorating and his behavior became demanding and erratic, leading Seaman Lapini to terminate the relationship. Mr. Cray found this intolerable. I surmise, based on his behavior, that he focused his attentions on you, Mr. DiNozzo."

"I don't wear a uniform, Ducky. This hospital excuse for a gown is as close as I get to looking like everyone else."

No one laughed. In other circumstances, they would have.

Ducky continued. "It was less the uniform, and more the thought of pursuing a relationship with an authority figure such as you represented, Tony. He apparently witnessed you with our Abigail, and mistakenly thought her to be a rival. The same occurred with Officer David. The final straw came when he chose to kidnap you, believing that he could win your affections through closer contact."

"Kind of a caveman mentality," Gibbs told him. "Clubbed you over the head and dragged you off to his cave in the country."

"Could've lived without the experience," DiNozzo grumbled.

"You're lucky to be living at all," Ziva said. "You owe your life to McGee."

"I do?" DiNozzo raised his eyebrows and looked at McGee. Agent McGee, for his part, turned red to his hairline and tried to sink in the bed under the weight of all the scrutiny.

"You do," Gibbs confirmed. "That bullet was meant for your heart, DiNozzo."

"That means no more jokes on McGee, Tony," Abby announced. "No more taking things from his desk, no more giving him the dirty jobs. No more talking about old movies. Treat him right."

"No more old movies?" DiNozzo was aghast. "Who am I going to torment, then? Ziva?"

Ziva fixed him with an eye.

DiNozzo quickly turned back. "Nah. Wouldn't be right. I'd never dare get onto the elevator alone with her, Abby. Nope, it'll have to be McHero over there. It's my duty to lighten the atmosphere of the office. After all, we deal with murder and heartache on a daily basis; it's my responsibility to keep everyone's spirits up, including McCyberGeek over there."

"Tony!"

"How 'bout you, boss?" DiNozzo quickly changed the subject before Abby could try to talk him into anything. "Your team is on medical leave. You can catch up on all the paperwork."

"Paperwork, DiNozzo?" Gibbs shook his head. "The reason I keep you around is so that I can delegate the paperwork to _you_. It'll be waiting for you when you get back to the office. I'm taking the week off to work on the boat."

"Me, boss? What about McGee—"

"You wouldn't expect a hero to do paperwork, would you, DiNozzo?"

Losing argument. DiNozzo tried the next. "How about Ziva? She could—"

"Officer David's command of the English language is not up to the standards that this case deserves," Gibbs lied.

"It isn't?"

"It isn't."

DiNozzo sighed. "Just my luck: Fatal Attraction, NCIS style." He fixed his hospital roommate with a determined eye. "Never thought I'd be saying this, McGroupie, but the next would be lover is yours."

He sighed again, watching as Gibbs shepherded the group out of the room. McGee, worn out, had already fallen asleep.

Yeah, this had been a tough one, but they made a great team.

Not that he'd ever tell them that.

Especially not McGee.

DiNozzo pulled out his cell phone, turning it on despite all the admonitions against cell phone use in the hospital. He surfed the net, locking onto a flower delivery website. He cast a thoughtful glance toward McGee: the man would be back at his desk first thing next week. DiNozzo set the date for the delivery.

One red rose, one slender bud vase, to be placed on Special Agent McGee's desk. No card.

Anthony DiNozzo leaned back against his pillows, enjoying the comfortable support they offered. One bullet: one rose. Seemed fair to him.

DiNozzo drifted off to sleep, a satisfied smirk on his face.

***

The end.


End file.
